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 probably mentioned that I’m doing an Arctic cruise in about a month, and the last stop is Reykjavik, Iceland. (Since I’ve been to Antarctica four times, this trip will make me officially bipolar.)
Rather than fly home immediately, I decided to spend an extra five days in Iceland because the country sounds so interesting and beautiful. I will be free there from the morning of July 19 until the afternoon of the 24th, and I have my guidebook. If you’re a reader (or learn about this somehow) and want to say hello, I’d be glad to meet you. If you want to say hi, have a beer, or give me advice, please either contact me by email or leave a note in the comments. I find that my travels are vastly enriched when I spend some time with the locals.
Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, in this case June 3, 2025. It’s also Chimborazo Day, celebrating the Ecuadorian mountain that has this distinction.
Chimborazo Day celebrates the spot on the Earth that is closest to the moon and farthest from the center of the Earth. Chimborazo is an inactive volcano that is in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes Mountains in central Ecuador, and has an elevation of 20,565 feet. Although Chimborazo has a lower elevation than Mt. Everest, because of its spot near the Equator it is the farthest from the Earth’s center and closest to the moon. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather it is an oblate spheroid. The Equatorial diameter is larger than the Polar diameter, and Chimborazo lies close to the former. Being that it lies on this Equatorial bulge, it sticks about a mile and a half farther into space than Mt. Everest.
Here’s the mountain as seen from Riobamba in Ecuador (I’ve also seen it):
Eduardo Navas, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A weekly demonstration in support of Israeli hostages erupted into chaos in Boulder, Colo., when a man using what was described as a “makeshift flamethrower” by officials attacked a group quietly marching down a pedestrian mall.
The group, a familiar one in Boulder, has walked through downtown regularly since late 2023, to remind the community of the hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. They often wear red, speak the names of the hostages, and sometimes sing. And they agree to return the next Sunday, same time, same place.
That ritual was shattered when the man, later identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, yelled “Free Palestine” and threw an incendiary device into the crowd, according to Mark Michalek, the F.B.I. special agent in charge. Within moments, smoke and screams filled the air. Victims fell to the ground. Others tried to put out flames with discarded clothes.
The incident intensified fears as the latest attack on the Jewish community in the United States, coming after two Israeli embassy employees were shot and killed last month outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and the residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was burned by an arsonist. . . .
Suspect arrested: The suspect, Mr. Soliman, was taken into custody after witnesses pointed him out, the chief said. He was later booked on multiple charges in the Boulder County Jail.
Footage of the attack: Video verified by the news agency Storyful showed a man, shirtless and holding two bottles, shouting while bystanders helped injured people nearby. Patches of grass in front of the courthouse were on fire.
A peaceful gathering: The victims were participating in Run for Their Lives, a weekly event that has brought attention to the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza since the Thanksgiving after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. “Our walk has been nothing ever but peaceful, and this was a blatant act of antisemitism on the streets of Boulder,” said Rachel Amaru, a leader of the group.
Here’s a news video showing the perp, who faces multiple charges, including murder. Apparently he expected to die in the attack, but did not.
The suspect in the Boulder, Colo., attack on supporters of Israeli hostages in Gaza is an Egyptian citizen whose American tourist visa had expired, the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday. Investigators were delving into the background and motive of the suspect, who left eight people hospitalized with burns and other injuries.
The Boulder Police Department said that none of the victims had died in the attack.
The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, entered the United States from Egypt in August 2022 and stayed illegally after the visa expired in February 2023, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
“The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country,” Ms. McLaughlin said in a post on social media. She added that he had filed for asylum in September 2022, but gave no additional details.
The attack, which the authorities said they were investigating as an act of terrorism, occurred on Sunday when a man used a “makeshift flamethrower” to attack people who were marching peacefully in support of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, officials said. Mr. Soliman, 45, was taken into custody after witnesses identified him as the assailant, and was booked on multiple felony charges in the Boulder County Jail. He was due in court Monday at 1:30 p.m. local time.
Two of those injured were in serious condition on Sunday, officials said.
You can be sure that Kristi Noem will make a television commercial touting the illegal dalliance in the U.S., but as we know from the D.C. shooting, whether or not someone is here illegally isn’t the main factor in these antisemitic crimes.
Iran is poised to reject a U.S. proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests or soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment.
“Iran is drafting a negative response to the U.S. proposal, which could be interpreted as a rejection of the U.S. offer,” the senior diplomat, who is close to Iran’s negotiating team, told Reuters.
The U.S. proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who was on a short visit to Tehran and has been mediating talks between Tehran and Washington.
After five rounds of discussions between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, several obstacles remain.
Among them are Iran’s rejection of a U.S. demand that it commit to scrapping uranium enrichment and its refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium – possible raw material for nuclear bombs.
Tehran says it wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and has long denied accusations by Western powers that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
“In this proposal, the U.S. stance on enrichment on Iranian soil remains unchanged, and there is no clear explanation regarding the lifting of sanctions,” said the diplomat, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Araqchi said Tehran would formally respond to the proposal soon. The U.S. State Department declined to comment.
Tehran demands the immediate removal of all U.S.-imposed curbs that impair its oil-based economy. But the U.S. says nuclear-related sanctions should be removed in phases.
Dozens of institutions vital to Iran’s economy, including its central bank and national oil company, have been blacklisted since 2018 for, according to Washington, “supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation”.
Now why on earth would Iran want to keep enriching uranium beyond that needed for “peaceful purposes”? More important, why does anybody believe what this terrorist nation of Islamist lying autocrats say? Well, if they reject the U.S. proposal, I’d say that the chance are better than even that Israel would be given the go-ahead by the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, perhaps even in consort with the U.S., which has bombs big enough to do serious damage. Why does Iran want a bomb so badly? Guess!!
*Greg Lukianoff’s new article in The Atlantic (archived) is called “Trump attacks threaten much more than Harvard“; the subtitle is “If the government succeeds in bullying the riches university into submission, what institutions will be safe?”
On May 22, the Department of Homeland Security stripped Harvard University of its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, instantly jeopardizing the visas of nearly 6,800 international students—27 percent of the student body.
But the Trump administration’s attack didn’t end there. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s letter announcing this move also doubled as a request for documents, instructing Harvard to deliver five years of video or audio of “any protest activity involving a non-immigrant student,” plus disciplinary files, before the ban will be reconsidered.
The administration justified its actions by invoking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the federal law that prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. However, the proper enforcement of Title VI requires an investigation, an attempt to negotiate a resolution, a formal hearing, and 30 days’ notice to Congress before a single dollar is yanked.
The Trump administration took none of those steps before announcing the intended outcome.
This is one among many reasons these moves are so egregious and unconstitutional. The government’s demand that Harvard turn over five years of footage of protests—a time frame that, tellingly, is not limited to the Gaza protests since October 7 that got out of control or involved illegal behavior—is one of the more chilling things I’ve seen in my almost-25-year career defending free expression on college campuses. These actions threaten not just Harvard, but every institution of higher education on American soil. That’s true regardless of your criticisms of Harvard, and I have plenty of those.
Lukianoff has criticized Harvard strongly, as he does here, saying that it’s an “intellectual monoculture” (true). Nevertheless. . .
However, it would be dishonest to pretend that the federal government just woke up one day and decided to target this university out of nowhere. That needs to be acknowledged, even if the Trump administration’s actions are still egregiously unconstitutional and present a real threat to academic freedom on all campuses.
The administration’s attack on academic freedom will not end with Harvard. Noem has already said that this should “serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions.”
Fans of the Trump administration’s actions shrug at the stakes here. But they should remember that rights are indivisible: If the government can coerce the richest school in America without due process, it can crush a community college—or a civil-liberties nonprofit—without batting an eyelid.
This is the primary reason, if Harvard loses, the precedent that loss will set won’t stay in Cambridge. Republicans who cheer today should take a moment’s pause from their schadenfreude and recognize that they might lament tomorrow, when a different president decides that, say, Hillsdale College or a Southern Baptist seminary is “too extremist” to keep its tax-exempt status.
More than two decades of protecting free speech on college campuses has taught me many things, and one of them is that the sword is always double-edged. That’s why we need to fight its improper use, no matter which way it’s slicing.
Lukianoff is right, even though he fully realizes Harvard’s problems. The University must not cave in to the government—as Columbia did.
*This is old-ish news but still ironic. In an unprecedented move, Harvard revoked the tenure of a full professor of business, whose research—get this—was about people cheat and lie. It was discovered that she manipulated data in her own papers, and that’s all she wrote. Literally.
Gino’s behavioral science studies examined topics like why people lie and cheat, and what factors, such as guilt, can influence behavior. She received tenure in 2014.
Harvard began to look into her work in 2021, after the trio of behavioral scientists behind the blog named Data Colada—Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn and Joe Simmons—scrutinized some of Gino’s work and flagged what they called irregularities in the data.
In June 2023, after completing its own probe and concluding that four papers Gino co-authored contained manipulated data, the university placed her on administrative leave and later began a review of her tenure. The probe had recommended she be fired.
Three papers have since been retracted. The fourth had been retracted at the time it was reviewed by the Harvard investigation committee.
Gino sued the university and the bloggers in August 2023. She said Harvard’s investigation—led by three professors tapped by the school dean—was flawed as well as biased against her because of her gender, and that the Data Colada blog posts falsely accused her of fraud.
Gino’s defamation claims were dismissed in court, but her lawsuit against Harvard is still going on. Data Colada is a good organization.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is patrolling her beat:
Chess world champion Gukesh Dommaraju beat Magnus Carlsen in a classical match for the first time, causing the world No. 1 to slam the table in frustration at the Norway Chess 2025 event.
The pieces toppled over as Carlsen, widely regarded as one of chess’ greatest players, punched the table after realising defeat to the 19-year-old.
Carlsen had led much of the game but lost momentum after sacrificing his knight in a blunder. Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, looked in shock afterwards, calling the win “lucky” and said “99 out of 100 times I would lose,” according to Chess.com.
Carlsen shouted “oh my God” before apologising to the Indian teenager, who left the table to compose himself after the momentous win. As he walked out of the room, Carlsen then patted Dommaraju on the back.
And a hammerheaded fly. We have them in Drosophila, too, and the males use them when fighting head-to-head as a way of gauging body size.
WHERE MY FLY FREAKS AT!?🪰👀The Amazon is home to some WEIRD & WHACKY flies, such as this male Paragorgopis sp. 🌳Apart from looking like a hammerhead shark, we almost know nothing else about this genus of flies! There is still SO much to learn about the invertebrate world and it excites me so much!🤩
Today we feature some lovely flower pictures from Thomas Webber. Thomas’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. (The images are stacked but, at the photographer’s request, I’ve omitted the info for each photo.)
The theme for today’s installment is Lawn Weeds. All the plants shown here are from roadsides, vacant lots, parks, yards, and the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, at the north end of the Florida peninsula. All are mowed from time to time, and as far as I can tell they weren’t planted where I found them. I think I’ve identified all of them correctly to genus, and most to species, but I’ve added the qualifier “cf.” to the species epithets I’m less sure of. I invite corrections.
White clover, Trifoliumrepens. Individual flowers 8 mm long. Native to Europe and Central Asia:
Oakleaf fleabane, Erigeron quercifolius. 1 cm diameter at full size. Native:
Marsh pennywort, Hydrocotyle cf. umbellata. Individual flowers 2 mm. Native:
Pennywort leaves (2-5 cm) make an arresting pattern when they grow together in a thick mass. This is part of a patch that covered about 25 square meters of a University of Florida lawn:
Wood sorrel, Oxalis cf. corniculata. 6 mm. Native:
Hawksbeard, Youngia japonica. 1.5 cm. Native to east Asia, now world-wide. The informative article linked here is devoted largely to means of exterminating this plant:
Vetch, Vicia cf. sativa. 8 mm across. Native to Europe and the Middle East, now cultivated and naturalized around the world:
Perennial peanut, Arachis glabrata. 1.5 cm across. Native to South America, cultivated and escaped in the southeastern United States:
False pimpernel, Lindernia dubia. 1 cm across lower petals. Native. These two were among over a thousand that carpeted the bottom of a small seldom-flooded retention basin:
Sunshine mimosa, Mimosa strigillosa. Flower head 3 cm tall. Native:
Peppergrass, Lepidium virginicum. Individual flowers 2 mm. Native:
Welcome to the last Monday in May: Monday, May 26, 2025, and it’s Memorial Day, honor members of the U.S. armed forces who died serving their country. Here’s a picture of only one of several cemeteries overseas where American soldiers are buried. These boys never made it home. Note the Jewish grave at lower left.
Bjarki Sigursveinsson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There’s a special Google Doodle in gray to mark the day; click on it to see where it goes:
News will be sparse today because, really, not much is happening in the world and I’m busy reading about academic freedom, which is a complex topic and the subject of many books and papers.
Russia unleashed one of its largest drone and missile barrages of the war on Ukraine overnight, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens across the country in an hourslong assault that Ukrainian officials said showed Moscow had no interest in a truce.
The overnight strikes underscored how months of diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire have failed to yield a breakthrough as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has dragged his feet on agreeing to any temporary truce, adding conditions that he knows Ukraine will not accept. And after threatening for weeks to walk away from the negotiations, President Trump now appears to be doing exactly that, telling President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia had launched 69 ballistic and cruise missiles along with 298 attack drones, adding that about two-thirds of the missiles and nearly all the drones were shot down. The air force spokesman, Yuriy Ihnat, said in an interview that it was the largest bombardment of the war in terms of the number of weapons used. Those numbers could not be independently verified.
It was the latest in a string of recent Russian attacks to involve swarms of more than 250 drones — a number unthinkable at the start of the war but now made possible by mass weapons production.
Attacks involving swarms of drones are often designed to overwhelm the enemy’s air defenses. Ukraine’s are already stretched, and each consecutive attack adds further strain. The latest barrage also hit western and southern regions of Ukraine which, unlike the capital, Kyiv, are poorly protected by air defenses, increasing the likelihood of fatalities.
There was hope in Ukraine that the cease-fire talks that Mr. Trump initiated in February would at least ease air attacks on civilian areas. Instead, the violence has intensified. Ukrainian civilian deaths have risen each month since February, according to the United Nations, reaching 209 in April — one of the highest monthly tolls in two years.
Two things here: first, clearly Trump was incapable of ending this war on “Day One” of his Presidency, as he promised (LOL), and he has no more interest in doing so. Granted that Putin doesn’t want a cease-fire, Trump should still be plumping for the democratic Ukraine instead of just ignoring the conflict or, previously, trying to broker peace by giving another chunk of Ukraine to Russia. Second, I’m not sure whether Russia would be satisfied with a chunk of Ukraine: perhaps it wants the whole country. On top of taking Crimea, the odious Putin isn’t facing near the opprobrium from the world that he should have. How often do you hear democracies speaking up for Ukraine these days?
*The Jewish Insider reports that Kingsley Wilson, a woman with a history of antisemitic posts, has been promoted to the position of press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Kingsley Wilson, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense who has come under fire from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish communal organizations for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, has been promoted to serve as the department’s press secretary, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
“Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President [Donald] Trump,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, posted on X on Friday.
When Wilson was named deputy press secretary in March, she faced widespread condemnation for dozens of tweets viewed as antisemitic and racist. On two different occasions, she attacked the Anti-Defamation League for sharing its origin story — the organization was founded after the lynching of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jew widely believed to have been wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a white child over a century ago.
“Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl,” Wilson wrote in 2023 in response to a post from the ADL, and repeated the claim a year later. “He also tried to frame a black man for his crime. The ADL is despicable.” (The tweet has not been deleted.)
Wilson has also called Confederate General Robert E. Lee “one of the greatest Americans to ever live” and regularly promoted the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory.”
Her appointment in March drew bipartisan criticism. “Obviously I don’t agree with her comments. I trust the Pentagon will address this,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider at the time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for her firing.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Mother Jones and Jewish Insider first reported many of Wilson’s comments, including her stated belief in the “great replacement theory,” which the Anti-Defamation League describes as a “racist conspiracy theory” amplified by white nationalist groups. The “great replacement theory” poses that societal elites, often cast as Jewish leaders, are orchestrating mass migration to the United States in order to displace white people and seize power.
Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer told Politico that Wilson’s comments were “horrible” and “just not appropriate.”
A relevant tweet is below. Wilson’s speech may have been free speech, but that doesn’t mean she deserves to be appointed a press secretary in the government, for you have no right to a job. And what rational person is going to trust her objectivity—indeed, her sanity—when she says stuff like that?
Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office.
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) March 5, 2025
*Speaking of semites, the Jerusalem Post notes that the National Security Council of Israel has issued a travel warning for Jews and Israelis traveling to CANADA, for crying out loud, upping the threat one notch for those individuals.. (h/t Malgorzata).
Israel’s National Security Council raised the travel warning for Canada from Level 1 to Level 2 on Sunday, citing “an increasing threat from terrorist elements against Israelis and Jews in Canada.”
The National Security Council called on the Israeli public in the country to exercise extreme caution, especially in anticipation of anti-Israel demonstrations expected to take place in Toronto and Waterloo.
Leaders of Canada, Britain, and France recently warned of sanctions against Israel if the country didn’t lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and end the military offensive in Gaza.
“We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank. We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions,” the countries said in a joint statement.
During last month’s elections, many Jews reported concerns about safety and antisemitism influencing their decisions.
The Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, has received criticism for rising antisemitism under its watch, making antisemitism an election issue. Antisemitism escalated following the October 7 massacre, as did anti-Israel protests and pushes for pro-Palestinian policy, leading to debates about Israel-Canada ties.
I wouldn’t be afraid to travel in Canada, though I do recognize an unusually high level of anti-Semitism in our friendly northern neighbor. But really, what solution to the war do Canada, Britain, France, and other countries that condemn Israel suggest? Two states, with Palestine ruled by Hamas? Do they think ahead about what that would entail? For that’s what would happen—if Palestinians even wants a state. The carnage in Palestine—and I do mourn every dead civilian—can be laid directly at the door of Hamas, who wants more dead Gazan civilians since it furthers their cause. Nobody can deny that the IDF has tried, more than any other army, to avoid killing civilians, but Hamas embeds itself among them to increase the carnage. It is a great frustration that nobody (not even many Israelis) seems to recognize these facts. Those who want a “two-state solution” right now are asking for more attacks on Israel, and forgetting that Palestinians rejected this solution at least five times.
CNN’s Jake Tapper calls his new book a tragedy. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which Tapper co-authored with Axios’ Alex Thompson, describes two Joe Bidens.
“The first one is the one that everybody got to know during his vice presidency,” Tapper says. “And the second one was kind of a non-functioning Joe Biden. … And that non-functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly starting in, like, 2019, 2020. And then, as his term went on, more and more behind the scenes.”
The book describes a president who failed to recognize longtime political allies, lost his train of thought in important conversations and forgot important dates, including the death of his son, Beau: “We in the public would see some of it in front of the cameras … but we had no idea how bad it was,” Tapper says.
Tapper says one source described a president that was being propped up by aides: “One person told us that the presidency was, at best, a five-person board with Joe Biden as chairman of the board.”
Looking back now, Tapper says he regrets not covering Biden’s decline more aggressively. “I can point to times where I asked him this or I asked them that … but knowing what I know now, I barely scratched the surface,” he says. “I need to run more towards the discomfort of questions about health because they’re so important and they’re so under-covered in Washington.”
It’s a pity that Biden was just diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, because the book comes out at an inopportune time. Still, it needed to be written and I’m going to read it. Two of Tapper’s interview highlights:
On the Democratic Party’s reaction to Biden’s debate performance
Democrats were shocked. They were just absolutely stunned. And I think there were really two camps. There was the Biden camp, which was, “OK, how do we get out of this? How do we crawl back?” Because Joe Biden, as I said earlier, as a compliment, he cannot be defeated. That’s his great attitude. He’s not going to be defeated by brain aneurysms, by this tragedy, by that tragedy. …
You don’t need to be a genius political consultant to know that the obvious remedy to fixing what he had just done was to go out and do 15 interviews and 20 town halls and five press conferences and just show people that he was as sharp as a tack as they had been saying. And the problem was he couldn’t do that, and that’s why his pollsters ultimately concluded there was just no way to get out of it. This was a disaster and it was going to keep getting worse and worse until election day.
On the public’s lack of trust in legacy media
The news media is in a crisis. … Reporters in general, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, all of us, people don’t trust us. One of the reasons they don’t trust us is what just happened with Joe Biden and his acuity and the fact that we in the media were pretty late to the story. I should [say], we in the legacy media were late to that story, because conservative media was not late to it. And I think that we are in an existential fight for a free press. Not that it’s gonna be taken away, but it certainly runs the risk of not thriving as it has. And that just calls on us to be as good and professional as possible.
*The Washington Post reports that a young bear cub rescued alone in the woods is being raised by humans dressed like bears (h/t Barry). I have a video below, and you can see more pictures at the archived article.
A tiny black bear cub was crying alone in the California woods, his mother nowhere in sight. He was less than two months old and weighed about three pounds.
Campers in Los Padres National Forest found the baby bear on April 12 and the camp grounds host reported him to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Initially, biologists monitored the environment, with the hope that the cub’s mother would return — but she did not. The cub couldn’t survive on his own in the wild, so he was brought to San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.
. . . . . Now, though, just over five weeks since he was rescued, the cub is thriving. He has gained nearly 10 pounds and has reached several developmental milestones — including learning to climb. The cub is the youngest black bear cub San Diego Humane Society has cared for.
. . . . When staff interact with the cub, they are usually garbed head-to-toe in a bear costume. They wear a bear mask and an oversize fur coat, as well as leather gloves. They also rub black-bear-scented hay they got from a local sanctuary all over.
“We don’t want him touching our skin at all,” Welch said, explaining that they are trying to prevent the cub from forming bonds with humans, which would disrupt his natural instincts and make it more difficult for him to survive in the wild. “He never sees us as humans.”
. . . .“We’re dedicated to doing whatever we have to do to keep him wild,” she said.
Indeed, beyond their bear costumes, staff have also created two habitats for the cub — one inside and one enclosed outside — that mimic the wilderness. They’ve built climbing structures made from natural trees, and they’ve covered the environments with leaf litter, dirt and branches. They also place stuffed bears around the habitat. The cub often cuddles up with the large one.
“It’s his surrogate mama,” Welch said. “He would lay with her instead of laying out in the open and being exposed.”
Now that’s the way to rescue a bear cub! What great, dedicated people. Here’s a video so you can see the baby and the bear costumes (there’s another video here):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sad thinking of her old d*g pal Cyrus, who has crossed the Rainbow Bridge:
Masih is still resting, so here’s some words from another advocate for women. Read the whole tweet:
The only people who consider it ‘anti-feminist’ to point out that a woman is a woman by virtue of her biology are those who think female-specific anatomy or bodily functions are inferior in some way, that bearing young is a lowly, worthless occupation, or that misogynist social… pic.twitter.com/3o5YXdwS4v
From Luana, a big fan of AI. I sort of agree with Singal here, but I think AI spells doom for universities:
I’m realizing more and more that while I understood in some sort of abstract or intellectualized way that AI was about to change a lot of stuff, I didn’t understand the full extent of what’s coming. We’re genuinely on a precipice unlike anything in human history.
Matthew, feeling better, is in Cambridge visiting his daughter. Fortuitously, he visited “the Golden Helix,” the home where Francis Crick lived, clearly marked as such. Matthew says, “It was bought in 1986 by friends of the Cricks, Nigel and Janet Unwin.”
Another from Matthew: An Antarctic brittle star cleans itself off!
Interesting video showing off the Antarctic brittle star Ophionotus cleaning itself off! #echinoday youtube.com/shorts/9cBOk…
Ecologist Susan Harrison always manages to come through when I’m low on photos, as I am now. Today she sends us a batch of birds from Ohio. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Magee Marsh, Ohio and its many warblers (and others)
The Great Lakes are a significant obstacle for songbirds struggling north from the tropics to breed in the vast, insect-rich expanses of high latitude North America. Abundant warblers and other small migrants congregate in mid-May in the boggy forests along the lakes’ southern shores. There, many species tank up on bugs and await favorable winds for the long water crossing, while others settle and breed.
In turn, birdwatchers also convene for this annual avian spectacle. Mid-May at Magee Marsh, on Lake Erie east of Toledo, has become known as “The Biggest Week in American Birding”. A friendly and festive atmosphere prevails as throngs of birders move along boardwalks peering into dense foliage and high treetops. This year, I was fortunate to combine a work trip with seeing peak migration at Magee Marsh.
I’m making this into a separate post because it pains me so much: it was the first thing I read online when I woke up this morning. Surely as a result of worldwide Jew hatred, instigated by the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli protestors in America (indeed, throughout the world), a pair of young aides at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death by, yes, a “Free, free Palestine” protestor. The murder took place right outside the Capital Jewish Museum, also in Washington. From the NYT (article archived here):
Two young Israeli Embassy aides were shot and killed outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in downtown Washington on Wednesday night by a man who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans after he was detained, according to law enforcement officials.
The close-range shooting occurred shortly after 9 p.m. on a street outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. The area is the heart of official Washington, packed with federal buildings, embassies and museums. The Capitol, the F.B.I.’s Washington field office and the headquarters of the Justice Department are all near the museum.
The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, was detained shortly after the shooting and there was no ongoing threat to public safety, law enforcement officials said.
Pamela A. Smith, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters at a news conference that Mr. Rodriguez exclaimed, “Free, free Palestine,” after he was in custody. He also informed the police where he had discarded the weapon used in the shooting, Chief Smith said.
Israel’s foreign ministry identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. Mr. Lischinsky was a research assistant in the political department at the embassy and Ms. Milgrim organized trips to Israel, according to the ministry.
Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador, said at the news conference that the two people killed were a couple about to be engaged. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem,” he said.
But being the NYT, the paper couldn’t resist putting in this paragraph:
After the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli military began a campaign in Gaza has devastated the enclave. It set off a wave of pro-Palestinian protests, including at Israeli embassies and at American college and university campuses. The Israeli Embassy in Washington has been a particular focus for protesters.
Did the NYT forget that the protests against Israel and for Palestine began immediately after the October 7 attacks, and Israel did not launch its invasion into Gaza until a week later, and a full-scale invasion nearly three weeks later? But that’s irrelevant; what’s clear is that Israel was never going to get the world’s sympathy, if it attacked Hamas—except perhaps for a day or two.
Nissim Otmazgin, a dean at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who taught Lischinsky, said he was gentle, hardworking and an idealist who was interested in building bridges between Israel and other countries. He spoke English, Hebrew, German and Japanese.
“He knew he wanted to be a diplomat. It was his dream,” he said. “A dream that shattered.”
Milgrim, who was American, worked at the Israeli Embassy’s department of public diplomacy and said on her LinkedIn profile that she was passionate about Israeli-Palestinian peace-building. She had worked as a Jewish educator.
“Her energy, thoughtfulness, and unwavering belief in dialogue, peace, and equality inspired everyone who had the privilege to work alongside her,” said a statement by Tech2Peace, an organization that Milgrim had worked at that brings together Palestinians and Israelis through tech.
There is no justification for murdering these young people. You can say that they worked for Israel, but they were not combatants. I talked to Malgorzata this morning, and she thinks this murder is a harbinger of violence to come; that it somehow will justify copycat murders of Jews in other places. That is what “globalizing the intifada” really means.
I hope Malgorzata is wrong, but I wouldn’t place money on it. One thing for sure is that this killing will do nothing to “free Palestine”. What Gaza needs to be freed from is Hamas.
Here’s an uncredited picture of the murdered pair from Tom Gross’s newsletter. What makes this even sadder is that in a week Yaron would have proposed to Sarah in Jerusalem, and now they will never be a married couple.
The crime is being investigated as a hate crime, supported by the new finding that someone with the same name as the suspect left a long (900-word) anti)-Israel manifesto online. I can’t find the manifesto online, but here’s part of a summary:
The approximately 900-word statement — written in the clear language of an English major, dated May 20 and published online around the same time the shooting occurred — mentions the high death toll in Gaza and notes the ineffectiveness of nonviolent protests against Israel, including the self-immolation of US Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell. It also expresses dissatisfaction with American support for Israel.
Very few Americans know anything about the Eurovision Song Contest, though it’s a much bigger deal in Europe. Wikipedia explains it:
The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la chanson), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster submits an original song representing its country to be performed and broadcast live to all of them via the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, and then casts votes for the other countries’ songs to determine a winner.
. . . Traditionally held in the country that won the preceding year’s event, the contest provides an opportunity to promote the host country and city as a tourist destination. Thousands of spectators attend each year, along with journalists who cover all aspects of the contest, including rehearsals in venue, press conferences with the competing acts, in addition to other related events and performances in the host city. Alongside the generic Eurovision logo, a unique theme is typically developed for each event. The contest has aired in countries across all continents; it has been available online via the official Eurovision website since 2001. Eurovision ranks among the world’s most watched non-sporting events every year, with hundreds of millions of viewers globally. Performing at the contest has often provided artists with a local career boost and in some cases long-lasting international success. Several of the best-selling music artists in the world have competed in past editions, including ABBA, Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias, Cliff Richard, and Olivia Newton-John; some of the world’s best-selling singles have received their first international performance on the Eurovision stage.
The rules are complicated, but individual viewers are able to vote alongside juries made up of ordinarymusic industry people from individual countries (see comment by Greg Mayer below for explanation of edit). This is all new to me, so pardon any errors, and by all means correct me.
There’s a political element to the competition, too. After October 7, 2023 and Israel’s response to Hamas, when European countries began turning against Israel, there were calls to exclude or boycott Israel, which weren’t successful. However, in 2024 the Swedish public demonstrated against Israel and its contestant, Eden Golan, singing the song “Hurricane“, written by Avi Ohayon, Keren Peles, and Stav Beger. I remember seeing large demonstrations against Golan at the venue and in her hotel, where she was ordered by her security team to stay inside. (The protestors include Greta Thunberg, sporting a kiffiyeh.) You can see pictures of the 2024 protestors, including the benight3ed Thunberg, at the Daily Mail site.)
One might conclude from this imbalance that either Israel was stacking the popular vote (but that’s not possible because viewer-voters cannot vote for their own country), or the public was not as anti-Israel as was the jury. Remember, this is a song contest, and politics shouldn’t have much to do with it, though the results of public sentiment seem to show that jurists representing a country are less pro-Israel than the people themselves.
The year the results were similar: a big imbalance between the popular and jury vote. Israeli singer Yuval Raphael finished second in the overall results, winning the popular vote. The jury, however, put her in a grim 14th place, but together that allowed Raphael to finish second. It’s also amazing in light of her story:
Raphael was attending the Nova Sukkot Gathering music festival in Re’im on 7 October 2023, when Hamas militants attacked the festival. She hid inside a Death Shelter near kibbutz Be’eri with 50 other people, while sustaining shrapnel injuries from grenades thrown into the shelter. Raphael was one of 11 survivors, having hid under dead bodies for eight hours. In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council, she described what she witnessed during the attack.
She also suffered wounds from shrapnel.
Here she is telling her story about Nova in a 14-minute video. There are several recordings of the telephone conversation between Yuval and her father as she lay in the bunker, covered with dead bodies. It’s a very poignant account of a survivor—one who thought for sure she was going to die.
Yuval didn’t die; she remained motionless under the bodies, even as Hamas threw grenades into the shelter. Afterwards, as you see above, she started fighting back, and her testimony was one of the ways.
I suspect entering the Eurovision Song Contest was another. Here’s her performance of “New Day Will Rise” that won the public vote (the music video, incorporating themes from the Nova Festival attack) is here. Remember, this isn’t the world’s best music, but it’s still an immensely popular contest in Europe.
Comparison of votes from the public and judges (a table):
Just like last year, the European public revealed the quiet support & love they have for Israel. The elite media judges, unsurprisingly, gave Israel just 60 points, but the European people mostly love Israel but hate their own media elites, and so gave them the most—297!
Any “stacking” of Israeli voters cannot explain this disparity. Draw your own conclusion, but one thing is sure: Ruval Raphael was fighting back through music, and she has to feel good about the results.
