Category: Uncategorized

Wednesday: Hili Dialogue

April 16, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a hump day (“dita e gungës” in Albanian ): Wednesday, April 16, 2025, and National Banana Day.  Here is how organic, fair-trade bananas are grown and harvested in the Dominican Republic:

And I can’t resist putting up this terrific live version of Harry Belafonte singing about a worker who loads bananas on boats. Have a listen!

A beautiful bunch of ripe banana
Hide the deadly black tarantula!

It’s also Day of the Mushroom, Save the Elephant Day (and don’t make them gestate embryos with some mammoth genes!), National Orchid Day, and National Eggs Benedict Day (Anthony Bourdain says to stay away from this brunch staple).  Here’s a wild elephant I photographed in South Africa last year:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Here’s an article to put spring in your step, and it’s by the NYT’s conservative op-ed columnist Ross Douthat: “Trump is on a path to failure.”

. . . when [Trump] returned to office, I vowed to avoid premature declarations of catastrophe. I would criticize, but I wouldn’t act as though everything was irrecoverable for at least the first year.

This week has sorely tested that resolve. None of Trump’s first-term policies carried the comprehensive risks involved in his great trade war — the threat of recession at the very least, the potential threat to America’s global position and basic solvency as well. Even with the suspension of the country-by-country tariffs, the scale of the China trade war and the general uncertainty created by the Trump whipsaw portend economic pain without a clear path to a rebound.

That’s a very bad place to be for a president who has always depended on good economic vibes, and it’s happening against a backdrop of other wrong turns and disappointments. I wrote in December about the need for a fruitful balance between Trumpism’s populist and techno-libertarian factions, between the spirit of JD Vance and the spirit of Elon Musk. I was imagining, say, pro-family tax policy jointed to abundance-oriented deregulation — but instead, the balance so far consists of reckless trade war on the populist side and Musk’s crusade to reduce government head count without apparent regard to government capacity. It’s a synthesis of sorts, but not a happy one.

Meanwhile everything the administration does, it does with a dose of tough-guy excess, as though determined to alienate any part of its coalition that isn’t fully committed to the MAGA cause. It’s not enough to pursue deportations; we need to deport people to a prison in El Salvador without convicting them of any crime. It’s not enough to ask our NATO allies to bear more burdens; the ask has to come with a snarl, a trade war and a fixation on Greenland. It’s not enough to purge D.E.I. programs; we have to hack away at scientific research and humanitarian aid as well.

This all makes for a very bad trajectory, and the fact that Trump survived bad trajectories before doesn’t mean that this one is destined to reverse. Maybe this time he’s too cocooned and unrestrained, too surrounded by flatterers, too confident in his place among history’s decisive figures (someone should tell him about their often unhappy endgames) to steer toward stability and popularity.

Douthat thinks that a course correction is still possible, and maybe he’s right, but I’m hoping he’s not.

He can have tariffs; he just can’t have the tariffs of “Liberation Day,” with their scale and cackhanded design. He can have deportations; he just has to accept the limits imposed by moral decency and the Supreme Court. He can have a version of the Department of Government Efficiency, just refocused on deregulation, where it should have been focused from the start. He can have yes-men and flatterers; he just needs some people in his cabinet to say, “Sir, maybe not.”

He can even pine for Greenland and woo its denizens. He just can’t threaten to go seize it.

Throughout his time as the dominant force in our politics, Trump has showed a capacity for what you might call temporary discipline, linked to a crude survival instinct and a sense of the prevailing winds.

If those instincts are still with him, this is the time to listen to them — and to remember that while fortune has her favorites, nemesis always waits.

I’m rooting for NEMESIS!

*The US and Iran are still doing a dance around Iran’s nuclear program, though I think it’s a stupid dance that won’t achieve the US aims. As the Times of Israel reports US Envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff (he’s incompetent) announces that the US is trying to slow down rather than dismantle Iran’s desire to create nuclear weapons.

US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff appeared to use a key component of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed during the Obama administration as a reference point for the ongoing talks with Tehran, in comments that seemed to indicate the US is looking to limit rather than dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program.

The deal, which US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 and has long criticized, barred Iran from enriching its uranium beyond 3.67 percent as part of a framework intended to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a weapon.

But then they add this:

“The president means what he says, which is: Iran cannot have a bomb,” Witkoff told Fox News in a Monday interview, elaborating that the ongoing “conversation” with Iran would be about enrichment and weaponization, with the imperative to verify any agreed commitments.

“Iran “do[es] not need to enrich past 3.67%. In some circumstances, they’re at 60%, in other circumstances 20%. That cannot be,” he said. “You do not need to run — as they claim — a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67%.”

Enriching uranium from 60% to the 90% needed for a weapon is a relatively short technical step.

The comments indicated that the US is looking to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment rather than dismantle its nuclear program altogether, as demanded by Israel, which sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.

Israel is right here, and Iran has evaded every limitation ever put on it. Witkoff seems to me just about as oblivious as Blinken when it comes to the Middle East.

*But the Free Press points out America’s obliviousness:

Right after Trump expressed his frustration that the mullahs may be stringing out the talks, he said: “Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

This may sound counterintuitive upon first read. Isn’t the whole point of Witkoff’s diplomacy to guarantee Iran will not build a nuclear weapon?

But a weapon is only the final phase of Iran’s vast nuclear-industrial complex. Specifically, weaponization refers to the construction of a deliverable warhead. In this respect, the fact that Trump did not say that Iran cannot have a nuclear program, which is what he insisted on when he scuttled Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, is a red flag.

On Monday evening Witkoff told Fox News that the aim of his negations was “to do something about enrichment.” He said: “They do not need to enrich past 3.67 percent.” Witkoff also said ultimately he wanted to reach a deal on verification that Iran’s enrichment was not for a nuclear weapon. “That includes missiles, the type of missiles they have stockpiled there, and it includes the trigger for a bomb.”

Yikes. Leaving aside the imprudence of announcing your real red lines at the start of negotiations, this appears to be a recipe for accepting a nuclear deal that is at best as weak as Obama’s in 2015. At least, that is the opinion of several hawks in Washington and inside the Trump administration. The problem is that in Trump’s second term so far, the “restrainer” wing has been ascendant. So while some administration officials, such as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have called for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, it’s Witkoff and his team who are actually negotiating with the Iranians.

. . . . Why offer Iran an opportunity to keep its centrifuges and ballistic missiles? Far better to press the advantage now and make Iran a Godfather offer. The mullahs can dismantle their nuclear program now in exchange for concessions—or America and Israel can do it for them.

We need to make Iran an offer it can’t refuse.  If you think they are amenable to dismantling their nuclear program, you’re wrong, and that’s why the proper deal won’t be made.

*This is relevant to what the Administration is doing to Harvard. Here, from 2019, is a quote from our late President Bob Zimmer about who enforces free expression on campus:

The question of whether this problem should be addressed through additional Federal legislation or executive action has been raised in multiple situations in recent years. In 2017, I testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, chaired by Senator Lamar Alexander. Senator Alexander asked me at that time whether I thought Congress should address free expression on campus through federal legislation. I replied unequivocally that I was opposed to any such federal legislation. The question of federal intervention in this arena arises again today, not with Congress, but with the Executive Branch. As was my position with respect to Congress, I believe that any action by the Executive Branch that interferes with the ability of higher education institutions to address this problem themselves is misguided and in fact sets a very problematic precedent.

There are two related features of potential Federal engagement on this issue that would threaten the mission of institutions of higher education. They would do so by creating the specter of less rather than more free expression, and by deeply chilling the environment for discourse and intellectual challenge. The first feature is the precedent of the Federal government establishing its own standing to interfere in the issue of speech on campuses. This opens the door to any number of troubling policies over time that the Federal government, whatever the political party involved, might adopt on such matters. It makes the government, with all its power and authority, a party to defining the very nature of discussion on campus. The second feature is the inevitable establishment of a bureaucracy to enforce any governmental position. A committee in Washington passing judgment on the speech policies and activities of educational institutions, judgments that may change according to who is in power and what policies they wish to promulgate, would be a profound threat to open discourse on campus. In fact, it would reproduce in Washington exactly the type of on-campus “speech committee” that would be a natural and dangerous consequence of the position taken by many advocating for the limitation of discourse on campuses.

Therefore, rather than improving the situation, further legislative or executive Federal action has the potential to reinforce and expand the difficulties regarding education and free expression that we are confronting now. It would be a grave error for the short and the long run.

QED.  I sure miss Zimmer (so do the ducks!), and it’s a crying shame that he died. I’m sure he’d be saying the same thing now, except more forcefully!

*I can’t resist posting this snarky article because I thought the “Katy Perry Space Shot” was a ludicrous bit of hype and not “historic,” as the news described it. The piece is called “Lauren Sánchez’s Cosmic Bachelorette Party.” (Article is archived here.)

If you don’t know what a bachelorette party is like, let me tell you: It’s like being vacuum sealed in a tin can with a bunch of girls you don’t know that well but with whom you have to pretend to have a life-changing experience, for the sake of the bride, who invited everyone and who has a vision.

In other words, it’s exactly what happened on this morning’s historic American spaceflight.

Just after 9:00 a.m., in West Texas, an all-female space crew lifted off and flew to the Kármán line, which is considered the beginning of outer space, thanks to Jeff Bezos’s private spacefaring company Blue Origin. Ten minutes and 21 seconds after they left the ground, and after a brief hang in zero gravity, the capsule carrying the six women landed back on Earth.

The newly minted astronauts include Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, pop star Katy Perry, CBS journalist Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. (While Perry was invited to take part in the experience gratis, according to Blue Origin at least some of the seats on the flight were paid for.) The tagline of the trip was “Taking Up Space” (their crew name was The Six Taking Up Space), and the whole thing smelled of a hen party down to the custom flight patch and matching outfits. The women all wore figure-hugging, blue bell-bottomed flight suits, custom-made by the brand Monse, and delivering on Perry’s promise that the six-lady crew would put the “ass” in astronaut.

A few days ago, Perry told the AP that she was doing this to “inspire” the next generation—but watching all the coverage (I couldn’t wait for this trip), it seems like this flight was more like the most publicized, and most expensive, bachelorette party ever rather than a generational watershed.’

It sounds like a big hype-fest as well as a bachelorette party, with a lot of self-promotion:

When the group got up to space and started floating—everyone’s perfectly coiffed hair flying everywhere—the group huddled to chant “take up space” and then, like when you pregame too hard before hitting a bar, they all split up to do their own thing. Katy Perry held a daisy (her daughter is named Daisy) up for the camera and teared up. She also revealed the setlist for her upcoming Lifetimes tour on a cardboard butterfly before letting it float away. Elsewhere in the pod, Lauren Sánchez held up a plushie of “Flynn”—the dyslexic fly character from her children’s book The Fly Who Flew to Space—and, like a drunk person, kissed it and said, “Proud of you, Flynn.”

A video:

Katy Perry used a misplaced apostrophe in her obligatory Instagram post below, which shows the “crew” in their designer space suits. The entire mission from launch to touchdown took eleven minutes.

Weiss’s piece is good, but I’d like to see what Nellie writes about this on Friday.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enigmatic, but Malgorzata explains: “So many humans go around with broken moral compasses. Why should ladybirds be spared from this epidemic?”

A: What do you see there?
Hili: A ladybird with a broken moral compass.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Biedronkę z uszkodzoną busolą moralną.

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From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Things with Faces, happy telescopes:

From Now That’s Wild:

Masih is still quiet, so I’ll have to give a tweet from someone equally demonized:

A picture from Divy:

From Malcolm, who says, “Too big to handle.” I found a response tweet, too.

Two from my feed. First, a happy ending:

Another happy ending. It reminds me of a book I just finished: Cold Crematorium, one of the best (and most distressing) books about the Holocaust I’ve ever read.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted.

A French Jewish girl gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz–on her 12th birthday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-16T10:24:24.793Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb: First, space tuna!

NGC 1514 is a nebula, the gas and dust ejected from a dying star. But hoo boy, is it *weird*. When you observe it with JWST, it looks like, well…… a transparent tuna fish can with bright glowing rims. Why?Good question. We don't know.badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/incredible…🔭🧪

— Phil Plait (@philplait.bsky.social) 2025-04-15T16:41:38.122Z

If any post is viral, this one is. Matthew’s take is “Insert metaphor here.”:

WATCH: Elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park react to Monday's 5.2 magnitude earthquake that shook San Diego County. The elephants formed an "alert circle" meant to protect the young and the entire herd from any threats, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

— ABC 10News (@abc10news.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T22:46:06.713Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 12, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 12, 2025, and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also the beginning of Passover, which commences at sunset tonight and ends a week later on Sunday. The meal is dire, but the holiday conforms to the description of all Jewish holidays:

“They tried to kill us;
We won;
Let’s eat!”

The seder meal (shown below).  It’s not a gourmet treat but a collection of metaphorical foodstuffs:

The six items on the Seder plate are these (read and learn!)

  • Maror: Bitter herbs, which Gamaliel says symbolize the bitterness and harshness of the slavery which the Jews endured in Ancient Egypt. For maror, many people use freshly grated horseradish or whole horseradish root.
  • Chazeret is typically romaine lettuce, whose roots are bitter-tasting. In addition to horseradish and romaine lettuce, other forms of bitter lettuce, such as endive, may be eaten in fulfillment of the mitzvah, as well as green onions, dandelion greens, celery leaves, or curly parsley (but parsley and celery are more commonly used as the karpas or vegetable element). Much depends upon whether one’s tradition is Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Persian, or one of the many other Jewish ethno-cultural traditions.
  • Charoset: A sweet, brown, pebbly paste of fruits and nuts, possibly representing the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt. The actual recipe depends partly on ethno-cultural tradition and partly on locally available ingredients. Ashkenazi Jews, for example, traditionally make apple-raisin based charoset while Sephardic Jews often make date-based recipes that might feature orange or/and lemon, or even banana. Other Talmudic traditions claim the Charoset “recalls the apple”, apparently referencing a tradition that Jewish women snuck out to apple orchards to conceive in Egypt, and that it is not obligatory but serves to nullify the poison of the maror.
  • Karpas: A vegetable other than bitter herbs, sometimes parsley or celery or cooked potato, which is dipped into salt water (Ashkenazi custom), vinegar (Sephardi custom), or charoset (Yemenite Jews) at the beginning of the Seder.
  • Zeroa: A roasted lamb or goat bone, symbolizing the korban Pesach (Pesach sacrifice), which was a lamb offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then roasted and eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.
  • Beitzah: A roast egg – usually a hard-boiled egg that has been roasted in a baking pan with a little oil, or with a lamb shank – symbolizing the korban chagigah (festival sacrifice) that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night.

You call this a meal (photo below)? But there will also be Matzos available, which are good if thickly slathered with butter, although butter won’t be on the table. . .

Yoninah, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also International Day of Human Space Flight, National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day (with tomato soup, of course), Drop Everything and Read Day (I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin), National Licorice Day (i prefer the Allsorts), and National Only Child Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*One of Trump’s executive orders (or a general order) was finally overturned by the Supreme Court: the blatantly illegal deportation of a man who was guilty of nothing. Even the administration admitted it made a mistake, but wouldn’t bring the guy back. Now he has to, or violates a Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release from custody of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador last month.

A district court judge had ordered the administration to bring Kilmar Abrego García back to the United States by Monday night, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a brief pause hours before the deadline, allowing the justices time to weigh a government motion to block the order.

In its brief order Thursday evening, the high court said the judge “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

There were no noted dissents.

After the high court’s ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government “to take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.” She also told the Trump administration to provide an update on its efforts by Friday morning. Xinis scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon.

Note that the Supreme Court decision was unanimous.  It is this route that will get Trump’s orders overturned. Even he, I think, doesn’t have the chutzpah to buck the Supremes. And the lower-court judge, peeved, “ordered the government to submit daily updates in the case of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.”

*According to the NYT, fears of war with the US (and probably Israel, too) helped bring Iran around to nuclear talks.

It was a closely held, urgent meeting.

Iran was pondering a response to President Trump’s letter seeking nuclear negotiations. So the country’s president, as well as the heads of the judiciary and Parliament huddled with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Khamenei had publicly and repeatedly banned engaging with Washington, calling it unwise and idiotic. The senior officials, in an unusual coordinated effort, urged him to change course, said the two officials, who asked not to be named to discuss sensitive issues.

The message to Mr. Khamenei was blunt: Allow Tehran to negotiate with Washington, even directly if necessary, because otherwise the Islamic Republic’s rule could be toppled.

The country was already dealing with an economy in shambles, a currency plunging against the dollar and shortages of gas, electricity and water. The threat of war with the United States and Israel was extremely serious, the officials warned. If Iran refused talks or if the negotiations failed, the officials told Mr. Khamenei, military strikes on Iran’s two main nuclear sites, Natanz and Fordow, would be inevitable.

Iran would then be forced to retaliate, risking a wider war, a scenario that could further damage the economy and spark domestic unrest, including protests and strikes, the officials said. Fighting on two fronts posed an existential threat to the regime, they added.

At the end of the hourslong meeting, Mr. Khamenei relented. He granted his permission for talks, first indirect, through an intermediary, and then, if things proceeded well, for direct talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, the two officials said.

My guess is that Israel would help with the fighting, if only to supply information to the U.S. I was under the impression that Iran’s nuke facilities were buried so far under mountains that bombing attacks would be useless. But, given that Iran relented, that doesn’t appear to be the case.  I still think that country is hell-bent on getting the bomb so it could destroy Israel, and am dubious about these talks with Trump, but we shall see. . .

*Here’s a clickbait-titled column by David Brooks in the NYT: “Producing something this stupid is the achievement of a lifetime.” (column archived here).  WHAT IS IT? What is stupid is the increasing functional illiteracy of the American people.

You might have seen the various data points suggesting that Americans are losing their ability to reason.

The trend starts with the young. The percentage of fourth graders who score below basic in reading skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests is the highest it has been in 20 years. The percentage of eighth graders below basic was the highest in the exam’s three-decade history. A fourth grader who is below basic cannot grasp the sequence of events in a story. An eighth grader can’t grasp the main idea of an essay or identify the different sides of a debate.

Tests by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies tell a similar story, only for older folks. Adult numeracy and literacy skills across the globe have been declining since 2017. Tests from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that test scores in adult literacy have been declining over the past decade.

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

Of course Brooks being Brooks, he has to impart a lesson:

There are some obvious contributing factors for this general decline. Covid hurt test scores. America abandoned No Child Left Behind, which put a lot of emphasis on testing and reducing the achievement gap. But these declines started earlier, around 2012, so the main cause is probably screen time. And not just any screen time. Actively initiating a search for information on the web may not weaken your reasoning skills. But passively scrolling TikTok or X weakens everything from your ability to process verbal information to your working memory to your ability to focus. You might as well take a sledgehammer to your skull.

My biggest worry is that behavioral change is leading to cultural change. As we spend time on our screens, we’re abandoning a value that used to be pretty central to our culture — the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgment all the days of your life. That education, including lifelong out-of-school learning, is really valuable.

. . .Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.

Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted.

Screen time is as good an explanation as any, and, aside from schools starting to ban cellphones, I can’t see it declining. Fortunately I’ll be dead before the time that all Americans are constantly walking around looking at their screens (I know a few who do it already).

*As usual, I am going to steal a few choice items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Yippy and afraid.”

I’m not sure she’s completely joshing here:

→ Good showers again: Trump this week signed an executive order repealing Biden’s water-flow limits on showerheads. “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” Trump explained at the signing ceremony, gracing us all with a look into the Swiss clock that is his mental policy framework. With Biden-showers: “I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes till it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.” This is the MAGA I want. This is the MAGA we need. Focused on the things that don’t technically matter at all but make my life better anyway. Focused on repealing the Biden-Harris nanny state. Focused on letting me be a little wild, a little wasteful, a little fun. Letting me buy a diesel-powered leaf blower and then using it every Saturday at 6:00 a.m. while I sip my coffee out of a plastic straw. Letting me buy incandescent light bulbs and then smashing them just because I can. California makes showerheads so low-flow that our showers are actually, legally speaking, steam rooms. The idea is you get in and sweat enough that eventually the water rolls off your body. We don’t use soaps or shampoos, so that’s not relevant. Just a lukewarm steam and off you go, ready for a weekend with your polycule.

→ How could you have presumed me female: Anderson Cooper, leading a town hall with Bernie Sanders, got chastised for using she/her pronouns for a completely normal-looking woman, with a completely normal-woman name of Grace. Called upon by Cooper, she snaps: “I use they/them pronouns actually, thank you,” clearly annoyed, clearly relishing the moment. Then she starts her question, which is about why men aren’t compelled by the Dems anymore, and no, I’m not kidding: “Polling and turnout data indicate that men of all racial demographics are turning away from the Democratic Party. . . ” Yes, it is a great mystery, Grace, they/them. I’m obsessed with Bernie’s face as this is unfolding:

Here is a video of the incident:

→ The majority of Americans are now anti-Israel: More than half of U.S. adults (53 percent) now hold an unfavorable view toward Israel, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Americans’ disfavor toward Israel has increased over 10 percent since 2022, before the October 7, 2023 attacks. And this was ultimately part of Hamas’s strategy with those attacks. This has been the long game for Iran and Qatar. Everyone knew Israel would defeat Hamas. The goal was to make the world hate Israel for doing it. The goal was to torment the Israelis just enough (taking an infant and a toddler hostage, for example) that instead of some little strikes on a few Hamas rocket launchers, they would go to war. And war is horrific. And Jews aren’t supposed to make war. They are inside cats. Anyway, it worked. Americans hate Israel now. Antisemitism is back.

On cue: A black Jewish woman went to a Staples on Wilshire in L.A. to get some postcards printed this week. One card was for her black Zionist group, and another was about “Jewish Joy.” The team at Staples refused to print the cards, with one employee saying Zionism is “racist,” and I guess Jewish Joy is just freaky. Zio-lite. The customer recorded the interaction, so we can all watch as a Staples employee explains that real Judaism doesn’t support Israel. Another guy at the store randomly yells at her too. And this is in Los Angeles, where there are lots of Jews! I converted just in time. I’ve always wanted to be discriminated against in some way. I was born too late for gayness to be a compelling thing to hate me for (Thanks a lot, Ellen). But finally, finally, I’ve got it. Good Shabbos, I say. You can find me at Staples printing my Lesbo-Zio-Merica-Number-One art, waiting to get yelled at.

There’s a new piece on Matt Johnson’s site that mirrors my increasing feeling that the Free Press is becoming more right wing, or, as the author says, “Rather, The Free Press has amassed a huge following by being a more artful and less shrill version of the anti-woke alarmism that permeates the right-wing media ecosystem.

*And a rare Denisovan fossil has been discovered in Taiwan, and identified, by of all things, protein sequences, not DNA sequences:

An ancient jawbone discovered in Taiwan belonged to an enigmatic group of early human ancestors called Denisovans, scientists reported Thursday.

Relatively little is known about Denisovans, an extinct group of human cousins that interacted with Neanderthals and our own species, Homo sapiens.

“ Denisovan fossils are very scarce,” with only a few confirmed finds in East Asia, said study co-author Takumi Tsutaya at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan.

So far, the only known Denisovan fossils include partial jawbones, a few teeth and part of a finger bone found in caves in Siberia and Tibet. Some scientists believe fossils found in a cave in Laos may also belong to Denisovans.

The probable identification of the jawbone from Taiwan as Denisovan expands the region where scientists know these ancient people once lived, said Tsutaya.

Based on the composition of marine invertebrates found attached to it, the fossil was dated to the Pleistocene era. But exactly which species of early human ancestor it belonged to remained a mystery.

The condition of the fossil made it impossible to study ancient DNA. But recently, scientists in Taiwan, Japan and Denmark were able to extract some protein sequences from the incomplete jawbone.

An analysis showed some protein sequences resembled those contained in the genome of a Denisovan fossil recovered in Siberia. The findings were published in the journal Science.

I haven’t yet read the paper, but click on the title page below and you can:

A map and photo of the mandible from the paper. How did they know it was a male mandible? Because one of the proteins produced resides on the Y chromosome, and others on the sex chromosomes had male-specific variants.

(from the paper): Fig. 1. Map showing the distribution of known, molecularly determined Denisovan fossils and photos of Penghu 1. Fossil sites are also shown. (Inset) Photos of Penghu 1 show the (top) superior and (bottom) right lateral views. [Photos by Y.K. and C.-H.C.]
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is inspecting the garden again:

Hili: That peach from Elżbieta had a good stone.
A: I wonder whether the tree from that stone will have flowers this year.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta brzoskwinia od Elżbiety miała dobrą pestkę.
Ja: Ciekaw jestem, czy drzewo z tej pestki już w tym roku zakwitnie.
And a photo of Baby Kulka:

 

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From somewhere on Facebook, I found the best satirical rebuttal of Colossal Biosciences, the de-extinction of the Dire Haggis:

From Things with Faces, parent and offspring:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

No Masih today (I guess she’s taking a break), but here’s a recent tweet by Titania. Some people took her seriously, and so there’s a “Rate Community Notes” list under the tweet I have. (For some reason I’ve been chosen to evaluate these notes.)  Many people still think Titania is serious and uber-woke.

From Malcolm, a cat referee:

From Luana, who says, “They guy is very annoying, but the professor is unhinged. What an embarrassment for Barnard College!”.  The professor is identified in the thread as “Prof Jackie Orr. Used to teach at Syracuse and is now an adjunct faculty member at Barnard College.”

Two from  my feed: a great moment for a horse:

And Colossal tried to answer me using their cherry-picked definition of “de-extincted”. They didn’t quote the rest of the source, though. I swear, the more they defend themselves, the worse their scientific reputation gets.  They are disingenuous:

One from the Auschwitz Memorial that I reposted:

French Jewish girl gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. Had she lived, she would be 89 today.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-12T10:27:07.901Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. This first one is from a much relieved mathematician at University College London:

Our cat came home today! Thin as a rake but whole and purring and hasn't left laps all night.Not sure how she found her way home after four weeks but she did ❤️❤️❤️

— Prof Christina Pagel (@chrischirp.bsky.social) 2025-04-10T22:10:11.087Z

and a VERY lazy moggy:

@critter.charmers

🤗Your support means more than you know. When you shop at our small pet store, you’re not just buying treats or toys—you’re helping us care for pets, follow our passion, and stay part of this amazing community. Thank you for choosing small, choosing love, and choosing us. Shop local. Shop with heart.❤️ #fyp

♬ original sound – Critter Charmers

Saturday: Hili dialogue

April 5, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to shabbos for Jewish cats. It is CaturSaturday, April 5, 2025, and National Deep Dish Pizza Day, celebrating one of the culinary glories of Chicago, and certainly the best species of pizza in America (do not bother to question this). Here is a short video showing you Chicago’s highlights:

It’s also National Dandelion Day, National Raisin and Spice Bar Day, National Caramel Day, and National Flash Drive Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 5 Wikipedia page.

The Biological Sciences Division is hosting a free field trip to the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie today, and I’m going (there’s also a free lunch catered by Kaurman’s a Jewish deli), so posting will be light. Bear with me; I do my best!

Da Nooz:

*Don’t worry!: even though the stock market tanked yesterday, with the Dow down 2200 points (about 5.5%%)—the second huge drop in a row caused by Trump’s idiotic tariff imposition—things will be okay. Or so Trump tells us, as he says the markets will come roaring back and America will be prosperous again.  Does he really believe what he’s saying, or is he simply lying? It’s hard to tell with this man.

A sharp rise in trade-war intensity sent Wall Street spiraling Friday, pushing the Nasdaq into a bear market denoting a 20% decline from its peak.

China’s decision to apply a 34% levy to all imported goods from the U.S. next Thursday, after President Trump’s tariffs go into effect, rattled markets in part because it further deflated hopes that a global settlement could be reached soon.

Further hitting sentiment, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was more likely to face a period of higher prices and weaker growth than seemed possible a few weeks ago because of larger-than-anticipated tariff hikes.

The S&P 500 dropped 6%, the Nasdaq slid 5.8% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2231 points. The carnage was widespread, with 14 S&P 500 stocks rising for the day and 28 dropping 10% or more. The marketwide toll from the two-day tariff rout surged to a record $6.6 trillion.

The torrent of selling late this week shows investors coming to grips with the grim implications of the standoff. The levies announced late Wednesday were deeper and more aggressive than the business world expected. Retaliation stands to intensify the economic effects of the policies, which could reduce consumer income and slow economic growth.

Now investors are bracing for further conflict—none of which is likely to improve the outlook for the global economy or corporate profits, the strongest driver of stock prices.

Even as Trump left the door open to making deals, he vowed new tariffs on drugs and microchips. Investors took little comfort from Trump’s stated willingness to negotiate.

JPMorgan analysts on Thursday boosted their odds on a global recession to 60%.

Trump remained unbowed, saying that now is a great time to get rich and that “China played it wrong, they panicked.”

We may well fall into a recession (from now on, the “r-word”), and it doesn’t make me feel any better than Trump’s stupid decision may make people think twice who voted for him. After all, he’s not going to lose his 401k savings or have to tighten his belt because of rising prices at the grocery store or used-car lot. The decision to raise tariffs across the board is one of the craziest things he’s done, and that’s among a lot of crazy things. I am sure that this will be the lead story on the evening news, and also that he will find a way to construe this as a good thing.

*I guess today is Tariff Day, as the NYT has an article contradicting what I said above, declaring that Trump’s aides insist the tariffs are a good thing.  But perhaps they’re just lying to keep their jobs (article is archived here).

In the weeks leading up to his expansive global tariffs, President Trump and his top aides tried to prime the public for economic pain. They warned that while there would be fallout from their aggressive trade strategy, it would prove short-lived and benefit the economy in the long run.

Investors, businesses and others made clear on Thursday that the U.S. economy was not ready to accept that approach. Global markets tumbled, economists warned of a possible recession and consumers braced for price increases on cars, food, clothing and more.

The early tumult underscored the high stakes of Mr. Trump’s agenda, which the president has framed as a painful medical procedure to rescue an economy he likened to a “sick patient.” In the eyes of Mr. Trump, the United States is going to “boom” once his tariffs have had time to reset the nation’s trade relationships, raise revenue and boost domestic production.

But those tariffs are expected to send prices skyrocketing in the interim, an unwelcome development for Americans already struggling with years of elevated prices. Several economists have increased the odds of a recession in their forecasts as they projected a slowdown in consumer spending, business investment and economic growth.

A new analysis from the Yale Budget Lab found that Mr. Trump’s overall tariffs could cause price levels to rise 2.3 percent in the short term. That would translate into an average loss of $3,800 in purchasing power per household based on 2024 dollars.

In an interview on Thursday, Stephen Miran, who leads the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, acknowledged that the economy could be “bumpy” for an unspecified period as the administration pursued its agenda, which includes tariffs, tax cuts and deregulation.

“It shouldn’t be surprising, given the historic scope and speed of the president’s actions, that there are some reactions around financial markets, like what you’re seeing,” he said.

But Mr. Miran maintained that the true cost of the president’s trade policies would ultimately be borne by other countries, adding: “I don’t agree with the argument Americans are ultimately going to be paying for these tariffs.”

That is a lie, and Miran knows it.

The White House assurances offered a stark contrast with the view broadly adopted by economists, who believe Mr. Trump’s tariffs threaten to exacerbate inflation, possibly undermining the recent work of the Federal Reserve to try to bring prices under control.

And I’ll end here, as I’m being overcome by the strong odor of mendacity.

*Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, has a NYT op-ed called, “Your life will never be the same after these tariffs.”  Never? Oy vey!

Small tariffs create small problems. Big tariffs create huge ones. Take Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles, which is expected to raise their prices by roughly $4,000. Many families, like mine, will probably decide not to buy a second car. That creates far bigger problems than an aging washer. Now, we’re constantly juggling how to get our kids to all their activities, and ourselves to work, with only one set of wheels.

And it’s not just cars. These are across-the-board tariffs, so they will distort virtually every purchase you make. In each case you’ll have to stop your baked-in calculations, recalibrate and find a way to make do — perhaps substituting frozen vegetables for fresh vegetables, a less effective medication for a higher-priced import, or corn syrup for sugar. And in each case, you’re worse off.

. . . . By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions, they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday are roughly 10 times as high as most other industrialized countries, and higher than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs (of Great Depression fame).

Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs will lead folks to rethink not only whether to replace their washing machine — as they did in 2018 — but also their dryers, refrigerators, stoves, groceries, clothes, cars and even everyday essentials.

Many of the substitutions we’ll make will be quite painful. If a 1 percent tariff leads you to switch from real guacamole to a pea-based alternative, then you really didn’t care about guac all that much. But if it takes a 20 percent tariff to get you to switch, that’s a sure sign that going without the real thing is a serious hardship. And this is why higher tariffs generate a far greater amount of pain. These forces aren’t independent of each other. They interact. Or in math, they multiply, which means their costs rise in the square of the tariff rate. That leads to some pretty painful arithmetic.

. . . Perhaps voters pulled the lever for Mr. Trump with warm memories of the good economic times. But the reality of his first term is that there was a lot more tariff talk than action. They were barely more than a bump in the road. This time, they’re a mountain. And so the impact will be more like a crash than last time’s comfortable jolt.

Maybe Trump, whose economic advisors certainly told him not to do what he did, will come to his senses and cut the tariffs back. And maybe the Moon will turn to cheese.

*As always on Friday, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-humor column, called this week, “TGIF: Our beef is beautiful.”

→ UATX merit-first admissions: My wife’s fake university, the University of Austin at Texas (I think), is making a lot of “university” noises lately. UATX recently announced their merit-based admissions policy: automatic admission for students who score 1460+ on the SAT (didn’t realize it was a school for the educationally challenged), 33+ on the ACT (could get that in my sleep), or 105+ on the CLT. What, you may ask, is the CLT? If you don’t know, you’re clearly not cut out for the meritocratic bloodbath that would be your freshman year. Me, I got a 108.

UATX also said that admission depends on students meeting “basic eligibility” and an “integrity check.” “Basic eligibility” is such a broad category that I’m a little alarmed at what it could include. But I love this. I do. Merit is so in. Until my kids have to apply to college—then what matters is soul and grit and whether Yale wants a water polo–compliant pool next to the dorm or not. What troubles me is that UATX seems very real. Which means, of course, that I’d like to reiterate that I was always for it, always a vocal UATX champion, and actually, I founded it, despite the complaints of my wife, who didn’t believe in me. You’re welcome, America.

→ Are you hiding DEI in your attic? After the University of Michigan announced that it planned to close its DEI office and discontinue its DEI strategic plan, the dean of their art and design school announced that he intended to maintain DEI, saying: “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) will continue at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design because our academic program and DEI initiatives are legally compliant, in alignment with our university values, and an extension of the mission of our school.” It’s been a little strange to see how fast everyone has rolled over for Trump’s cultural revolution, and my only explanation is that most people—especially in corporate America—hated this stuff and wanted any excuse to be done with it. But not the University of Michigan art school. They’re putting up a fight. They’re #Resisting. They must continue to discriminate against men, and I can’t even blame them. Men should not paint. So, all in all, I support them. As I tell Suzy when she’s asking for dating advice (i.e., sitting nearby), men should not be artists. If it takes a DEI bureaucrat to explain that to them, so be it.

I didn’t believe this one, but look at the link. The quotes are real—including Katy Perry’s!

→ Blue Origin women’s crew: Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, is sending an all-female crew to space—insane, I agree, since what exactly is the plan when one of the valves break and there’s no husband to call?—and they sat down with Elle. Gayle King, who, along with Katy Perry, was chosen to take part in the flight, said, “I can honestly say it has never been a dream of mine. I was having a conversation with Katy, and she said, ‘Well, maybe you need to get different dreams.’ And I just thought, Wow.”

Then Katy Perry said, “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” which I do love. I’ve never been more interested in a space journey. Their plan is to bring lipstick and lash extensions to space, which they claim to be a first, but you really never know. People have interests. I don’t judge.

→ Wow, the entire Hamas narrative was a lie? Hamas recently revised its casualty figures, dropping the names of thousands of previously reported deaths in the Israel-Hamsa war. And it looks like they vastly overcounted the number of women and children. The Jerusalem Post reports that 72 percent of all deaths are men between the ages of 13 and 55. It suggests a very different story from their previous claim that 70 percent of casualties were. . . women and children. We anxiously await the splashy corrections. The groveling mea culpas. When my lovely hummus lady at the local farmers market in Los Angeles found out I was Jewish, she said it was totally cool as long as I didn’t “want to kill babies.” So I can’t wait for this important correction to trickle down her way as the American mainstream media engages in a broad reflection that I am sure is coming right. . . about. . . now?

*I want to end this dire week with some good news, and there is some. Ophelia, one of the escaped otters from a Wisconsin Zoo, has been recaptured, but her mate Louie is still on the loose. A huge leatherback sea turtle (400 lb.; this is the largest species of sea turtle), who was entangled in ropes in Cape Cod Bay, has been freed by rescuers. As the website notes:

The turtle was disentangled, given a health assessment including bloodwork, and tagged with satellite and acoustic tags for post-release monitoring. The tags applied include an acoustic transmitter, which operates like an EZ Pass transponder, allowing the turtle to be detected for up to ten years by a vast array of underwater receivers that stretch from Canada to Florida. The turtle also received a “survivorship” tag to determine short-term (30-day) outcome, and a traditional satellite tag that will monitor the turtle’s movements and dive behavior in near real-time for up to a year. The turtle, nicknamed ‘Phinney’ by Barnstable Harbormaster responders, can be followed on the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Tracker.

At Botany Pond, Mordecai and Esther are still schmoozing, but the hen hasn’t yet started nesting. We’re told that next week they’ll be putting the final touches on the pond. Stay tuned; I think that nesting is imminent as soon as the weather warms up.

Finally NBC’s “Today” show site has “150 Dark Humor Jokes” (I know ones a lot darkers!), and I’ll try to put a few amusing ones here. Several of  these are groaners.

  • A man goes to a therapist and says, “Doctor, why do people keep ignoring me?” The therapist replies, “Next!”
  • When ordering food at a restaurant, I asked the waiter how they prepare their chicken. “Nothing special,” he explained. “We just tell them they’re going to die.”
  • Don’t challenge Death to a pillow fight. Unless you’re prepared for the reaper cushions.
  • Today, I asked my phone “Siri, why am I still single?” and it activated the front camera.
  • I’d like to have kids one day. I don’t think I could stand them any longer than that, though.
  • At home, they treat me like God. I’m generally ignored until someone wants something.
  • Why did the lion go to therapy? He found out his wife was a cheetah.

Tha-tha-that’s all, folks! I’ll be here all year!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a chonky Hili makes it up a tree:

Andrzej: It’s been a long time since you climbed on the tree.
Hili: There is an alien dog running around so it’s safer here.
In Polish:
Ja: Dawno nie wdrapywałaś się na drzewa.
Hili: Obcy pies tu biegnie, więc tu jest bezpieczniej.

And a picture of Szaron. Polish caption: Po tej trawie coś chodzi.   Translation: ““Something is walking on the grass.”

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

From Dave, who took this photo. Is the one on the right superfluous?

From Now That’s Wild:

From The Dodo Pet:

Masih is quiet, but Titania is tweeting again. If you see “Community notes” under the tweet, be sure to read them!

From Barry, who said, “He doesn’t look pleased.”

I told him about tariffs.

— Comfortably Numb (@numb.comfortab.ly) 2025-04-03T10:43:07.031Z

The woman is Stephanie Turner, her act was not “hate speech,” but bravery (she was expelled from the tournament), and USA Fencing is reprehensible.  Note that USA Fencing’s motivation for this dumb policy is to create “inclusive safe spaces”.  But the male fencer could have competed against other males, and fencing even has “mixed tournaments.”

Here’s an interview with Turner in which she describes her actions:

And of course ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio weighs in. His ignorance is the hill he will die on:

From Luana; I didn’t know that Muhammad discouraged public acts of prayer:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. Has she lived, she'd be 92 years old today.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-05T10:08:58.051Z

Two posts from Doctor Cobb.  First, things with faces:

I googled "houses that look surprised" and I'm glad I did.

— Kalvin the Reindeer (@kalvinmacleod.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T14:33:36.639Z

The not-so-good old days! A lot of the guys are wearing striped pajamas, too.

Our throwback from the University Archive this week celebrates World Party Day! It shows students dancing at a Valentine's pyjama hop in February 1959. 📷 EUL UA/P/3h #WorldPartyDay #ThrowbackThursday #UniOfExeterArchive #Archives

— University of Exeter Special Collections (@exeterunispeccoll.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T08:53:15.297Z

Judith Butler on Trump’s EOs, with an emphasis on sex and gender

April 1, 2025 • 11:30 am

The latest issue of the London Review of Books contains a long essay by Judith Butler attacking Trump’s Executive Orders, particularly 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”  You can read her piece by clicking on the title below:

 

The piece constitutes good news, bad news, and mixed news.  The good news is that Butler’s prose is, for once, comprehensible (usually she writes in such dense academic jargon that you can barely work out her meaning). The mixed news is that she does say some stuff I agree with: stuff about the rights of those who are gender nonconformists. And she also calls out Trump for allowing the snatching up of visa- and green-card holders who get deported simply for saying things (mostly pro-Palestinian) that the government doesn’t like. I oppose that. No deportations without through legal investigation and, I think, a court hearing!

The bad news is that Butler falls prey to common misconceptions about sex. One is her opposition to the biological definition of sex using gametes, a definition to which I adhere. This, says, Butler, is wrong, and that definition was promulgated by Trump simply as a way to erase trans and nonbinary people. She justifies her opposition by referring to the “tri-societies” letter published on the Society for the Study of Evolution‘s webpage, a letter that many of us criticized heavily for denying the binary nature of sex and asserting that sex was nonbinary in all species. Here’s how she characterizes that letter:

There are two significant problems with using gametes to define sex. First, no one checks gametes at the moment of sex assignment, let alone at conception (when they don’t yet exist). They are not observable. To base sex assignment on gametes is therefore to rely on an imperceptible dimension of sex when observation remains the principal way sex is assigned. Second, most biologists agree that neither biological determinism nor biological reductionism provides an adequate account of sex determination and development. As the Society for the Study of Evolution explains in a letter published on 5 February, the ‘scientific consensus’ defines sex in humans as a ‘biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex.’

Let’s first get out of the way the canard that the sex of babies is not determined by using gametes, so gametes are irrelevant to defining sex. Here she conflates “determination” with “definition”, a bad move for someone as smart as Butler. (But of course she has an agenda.) Yes, babies’ sex is written down at birth nearly always by looking at their genitals, but genitals are imperfectly correlated with the reproductive apparatus that is used to define sex: whether one has the apparatus to make sperm or eggs. One may well find out later that genitals, particularly if they’re abnormal, are not an indicator of one’s biological sex.

Worse, though is that Butler is seemingly unaware of the controversy engendered by the tri-societies announcement. No, we do not know that the definition above is the “consensus” definition of sex, for none of the three Societies canvassed its members. And of course the Societies got themselves into the weeds by arguing that sex in humans is “a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics.” Is that so? Then how do we determine what sex any animal or plant is, given that in some cases chromosomes are irrelevant to determining biological sex, and “hormonal balance” doesn’t work so well in plants?

Seriously, the three societies should either take down that letter, which was never sent, or revise it. And if they’re claiming that it represents a consensus of the members of the societies, then they should poll their members. They did tell us that their letter is moot and needs to be rewritten. In fact, the ASN President admitted that the letter was problematic, hadn’t been sent, and needed revision.  Butler says none of this. Again, she distorts data that could easily have been found had she looked. But again, she has an agenda.Three societies: take down that letter!

Further, Butler buys into the discredited claims of Anne Fausto-Sterling that 1.7% of the American population is intersex and that there were actually five sexes. Fausto-Sterling later admitted that she was writing this “tongue in cheek,” and she and a colleague later revised that figure down to 0.4%. But even later work shows that, using the biological definition of sex and how clinicians themselves define intersex, the true figure is probably between 0.018% and 0.005%.

Now the proportion of intersex people in the population says nothing about how they should be treated, or justifies ignoring them as people. Rather, this shows that Butler is playing fast and loose with the data, and uses the data that supports her own views. That is intellectually dishonest.

Now it is entirely possible—I think likely—that the agenda of Trump’s EO involved more than just clarifying the biological definition of sex and saying sex is binary. His agenda likely involves the Republican distaste for gender-nonconforming people.  I don’t share that distaste, but I do agree with the EO’s definition of sex, which I hear was made with the input of biologists.  And the biological definition of sex, as I’ve said repeatedly, does not target trans or gender-nonconforming people with the intend of erasing them or, as Butler says, “effacing the reality of another group.”

Finally, Butler fails to realize that defining biological sex does have implications for people’s rights, which we can see very clearly when the “rights” of two groups clash, as in sports participation, incarceration, or allowing women to rely on biological women as rape counselors if they request it.  Among all the rights that we enjoy or are supposed to have, the clashed don’t involve many of them. But those clashes are still meaningful, and resolving, say, the sports issue by prohibiting biological men who identify as women to compete in women’s sports in no way “erases” trans-identifying men.  To me does not appear to deprive them of dignity; rather, failing to adhere to this restriction deprives biological women of opportunity. Butler seems impervious to the issue of clashing rights around the definition of sex. The part in bold below (my bolding) is correct–so long as there is no clash of rights between groups:

Although the order here opposes those who would ‘eradicate the biological reality of sex’, it also defines what women’s interests are, what trust in government requires and what is at stake for ‘the entire American system’. Thus, the regulation of sex assignment and the eradication of trans, intersex and non-binary legal existence is a matter of national concern: the ‘entire American system’ is at stake. Of course, the dignity, safety and well-being of women should be secured, but if we value these principles, then it makes no sense to secure one group’s dignity, safety and well-being by depriving another group of dignity, safety and well-being. Indeed, the order effectively consigns trans people to radical indignity and unsafety, if not non-existence. Women – including trans women – and trans, intersexed and non-binary people all deserve to be free of attacks on their dignity, safety and well-being, not only because the principle applies to all of them, but because these categories of person overlap. These are not always distinct populations.

The issues of sports participation, incarceration, and so on, must be adjudicated, and they are being so now. But no resolution deprives gender-nonconforming people of “dignity, safety, and well-being”  (Safety issues do arise, for example, when trans-identified males are put in women’s prisons.)  But of these few instances in which rights clash, there are solutions: “open” sports leagues, for example, or giving women who have been raped a choice between having a biological male or biological female rape counselor.

I don’t want to run on, but I have to say that there are places where I do agree with what Butler says, for instance striving to treat trans or gender-nonconforming people in a way that preserves their dignity, or, with respect to deporting people for free speech, this:

On 8 March, Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the US with a green card who participated last year in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Trump posted online that ‘this is the first arrest of many to come.’ It may seem that the targeting of people protesting in support of Palestinian freedom has nothing to do with objections to ‘gender ideology’ and the government’s efforts to strip rights from trans people. The link appears, however, when we consider who, or what, is being figured as a threat to American society. Educational institutions and non-profit organisations, especially progressive ones, are at risk of losing their federal tax breaks if they collaborate on projects concerned with Palestine or fail to expel students who engage in spontaneous or ‘unauthorised’ protest. If the Heritage Foundation’s plans become official policy, institutions or organisations that fund work critical of the state of Israel – or, more precisely, work that could be construed as critical – will be deemed antisemitic and supportive of terrorism. If they fund work on race and gender, they will not merely be guilty of ‘wokism’ but regarded as antagonistic to the social order that now defines the United States – in other words, a threat to the nation.

Although I don’t agree with Butler about the close connection with trans rights and deporting dissenters, I do agree that criticism of the government should not be punished with deportation, and that such behavior is indeed a “threat to the nation.”

But there’s a lot more in the article, and you can read it for free by clicking on the link above. In the meantime, though, Butler should have done her homework.

The Society for the Study of Evolution quits Twitter, implying that the site is “unethical”, irresponsible, and “not inclusive”. What they mean is “we don’t like Musk.”

March 23, 2025 • 9:40 am

Two days ago I was perusing the website of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), which, along with the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), wrote a statement to President Trump and Congress in early February asserting that sex forms a “continuum” in all species (see our rebuttal here).  Although the SSE’s statement is both biologically wrong and embarrassing, published just to conform to gender-activist ideology, it remains online (archived here), though the three Presidents who signed it haven’t yet seen fit to send it to the recipients, nor will they give us permission to post their response to our critique—a response sent to 125 signers of our letter.

That’s just for background.  While it’s within the ambit of the SSE, ASN, and SSB to try correcting governmental misstatements about science, in this case the government’s executive order on biological sex gave the correct definition (and a note that it’s binary), while the statement of the three societies was flatly wrong.  It’s not okay to distort biology in the name of politics.  People will perceive this as a sign that the SSE is becoming “progressive” or “woke”, and that leads, as we know, to public mistrust of science and scientists.

But on Friday I found another sign that the SSE is getting politicized, and it’s a more blatant statement. This statement (below) shows that the SSE has been fully ideologically captured and has no truck with Republicans.  That is fine for individuals, but when an entire scientific society tells us that Republicans—in this case Elon Musk—are unethical, that’s not good for the society, for its members, or for science in general.

Scientific organizations and journals should not take ideological sides (save when science itself is at issue), as we know from when the journal Nature broke precedent in 2024 and endorsed Biden for President in 2020. A paper on the outcome was published in Nature Human Behavior, of all places, and the results don’t speak well for journals taking sides. Here’s its abstract (bolding is mine):

High-profile political endorsements by scientific publications have become common in recent years, raising concerns about backlash against the endorsing organizations and scientific expertise. In a preregistered large-sample controlled experiment, I randomly assigned participants to receive information about the endorsement of Joe Biden by the scientific journal Nature during the COVID-19 pandemic. The endorsement message caused large reductions in stated trust in Nature among Trump supporters. This distrust lowered the demand for COVID-related information provided by Nature, as evidenced by substantially reduced requests for Nature articles on vaccine efficacy when offered. The endorsement also reduced Trump supporters’ trust in scientists in general. The estimated effects on Biden supporters’ trust in Nature and scientists were positive, small and mostly statistically insignificant. I found little evidence that the endorsement changed views about Biden and Trump. These results suggest that political endorsement by scientific journals can undermine and polarize public confidence in the endorsing journals and the scientific community.

That implies that journals and scientific societies should just shut up about ideological, moral, or political issues save when the issues deal with the mission of the organization. (This is the same kind of “ideological neutrality” adopted by several dozen universities, including mine.)

But the SSE can’t help itself. It galls me that a Society of which I was once President has become the Teen Vogue of evolutionary biology.  Now I don’t like Elon Musk’s political behavior, for he’s breaking our government like a bull in a china shop (his work as an “engineering leader,” however, is admirable).  But Twitter has its uses, and I remain on it, calling attention to all my pieces here.  And when I post there I don’t feel that I’m telling people, “I love Elon Musk!”

But the SSE can’t survive without going after Musk, and so they’ve announced their withdrawal from Twitter, which you can see here. I reproduce their announcement below (indented):

SSE on Social Media

Contributed by kjm34 on Mar 14, 2025 – 04:33 PM

SSE Council recently voted to cease activity on the SSE account (@sse_evolution) on X/Twitter after April 15. This motion was raised due to the platform’s ethical misalignment with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science. We encourage our members to follow us on other social media platforms in order to stay up to date with the latest SSE news.

Find SSE on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Facebook. 

Announcements are also sent to all SSE members via email in our monthly newsletter. Make sure your email address is up to date by logging in here.

The Evolution and Evolution Letters journals will also stop posting to Twitter – follow Evolution on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Facebook and Evolution Letters on Bluesky and Mastodon.

You can still find the SSE Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) on Bluesky and Twitter, and Evolution Meetings on Bluesky and Twitter.

Why did they do this? It’s no mystery: the Society is announcing its dislike of Elon Musk, who owns “X” (Twitter). And because the SSE sees Twitter as being in “ethical misalignment with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science,” they must sever most ties with that social-media platform. (Note that they don’t explain this “ethical misalignment”, but I guess it consists of simply this: “We don’t like Elon Musk and won’t post on his site.)

Except that they still do keep ties with the site!  As you see above, the SSE will continue to post announcements from the Grad Student Advisory Committee and announcements about the annual SSE meetings on Twitter. What is that about? If it’s unethical for the SSE to align with Twitter, then it must be unethical for its grad students, too, and especially unethical to use Musk’s site to harbor stuff about the annual meeting.

What about those other two societies? Well, I guess they haven’t yet gotten the message that their posting on Twitter constitutes unethical behavior. The American Society of Naturalists remains on Twitter (“X”), as does The Society of Systematic Biologists. Nor can I find any announcement of misalignment at the ASN’s own site or the SSB’s own site.

It mystifies me how among these three societies, which are closely aligned, only one has quit Twitter because it sees posting there as unethical. Come on, ASN and SSB, get on the progressive bandwagon!