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.
Today we have some plant photo sent in by Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can click on his photos to enlarge them. I have left the numbering of the photos to identify them since there is only one species.
I recently transplanted some Common onions (Allium cepa), and was thrilled to see them starting to bloom, but soon learned that a blooming (or bolting) onion has stopped growing the bulb and has put it’s energy into seed production. I guess that makes these onions food for the eyes rather than the stomach.
Prior to blooming, the stem (1) develops a bulge, and as the bulge gets larger it becomes translucent and you can see the umbel, or flower cluster starting to show thru (2). This made me think of the old Jiffy Pop popcorn pans!. Sometimes the flowers emerge with the petals closed (3 &4) and sometimes they seem to emerge in full bloom (5).
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Photo 2:
Photo 3:
Photo 4:
Photo 5:
I don’t know what the deal is with this little yellow flower (6), but I thought it looked pretty. Here is a flower prior to blooming (7), and another that is a little further along (8). The blooming flower reveals the fruit capsule (9).
Photo 6:
Photo 7:
Photo 8:
Photo 9:
No sooner do the stamens emerge to attract pollinators than spiders lay out their silk in order to trap and feast upon the unsuspecting pollinators (10). Here is the inflorescence in full glory (11).
Photo 10:’
Photo 11:
These plants have a deep emotional significance for me, since they are transplanted from the garden of a dear friend who passed away recently. I’ve never gardened before, but I started this garden in his honor and as a way to continue the spirit of his friendship. I hope you will indulge me in a tribute to my friend.
Ron Akin was a one of a kind human being (Homo sapiens) who was a free spirited cosmic cowboy, Texas hippie, and an old fashioned Southern gentleman. He dropped out of the naval academy in Annapolis to spend years hitchhiking around the country, picking fruit, performing odd jobs and starting Just For Fun parades in various locations. The parade he started in San Marcos, TX just celebrated its 49th year, and was held in his honor. He also played bass with garage band par excellence, The Callous Taoboys. I met Ron at The Dell ‘Arte School of Mime and Comedy in Blue Lake, California in 1982, and after that we spent five freewheeling summers performing as clowns at the Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, TX. We remained friends for the rest of his life, and I used to visit him at his home in the country where he had a garden full of onions, garlic, and all sorts of peppers. We’d spend days smoking the harvest from his garden on his grill, as well as all sorts of meats, and sit on the porch until late at night stuffing our faces and enjoying life. I never met a more free spirited, true-to-himself human being.
Here is Ron as The FreeDumb Fairy (alter ego of the lowly janitor Freiheit Gazoontite) at Schlitterbahn, participating in the Just for Fun parade, and down home on the porch. You can also see his prodigious onion harvest!:
Ron:
I call my new garden a friendship garden, though I have to admit that it feels a little lonely right now. Hopefully the onions will be the bridge to new friendship.
And here is my heartthrob Gal Gadot on Jimmy Fallon’s sho trying a Reese’s for the first time w. She likes it! (I’m told that the Trader Joe’s own version with dark chocolate is even better.
The World Health Organization declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and neighboring Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, after more than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths.
The WHO said the outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency like COVID-19, and advised against the closure of international borders.
The WHO said on X that a laboratory-confirmed case has also been reported in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the outbreak’s epicenter in the eastern province of Ituri, suggesting a possible wider spread. It said the patient had visited Ituri and that other suspected cases have also been reported in North Kivu province, which is one of Congo’s most populous and borders Ituri.
Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted via bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.
The WHO’s emergency declaration is meant to spur donor agencies and countries into action. By the WHO’s standards, it shows the event is serious, there is a risk of international spread and it requires a coordinated international response.
. . .Health authorities say the current outbreak, first confirmed on Friday, is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of the Ebola disease that has no approved therapeutics or vaccines. Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, this is only the third time the Bundibugyo virus has been detected.
Congo accounts for all except two of the cases, both of which were reported in Uganda, the WHO said.
The Bundibugyo virus was first detected in Uganda’s Bundibugyo district during a 2007-2008 outbreak that infected 149 people and killed 37. The second time was in 2012, in an outbreak in Isiro, Congo, where 57 cases and 29 deaths were reported.
. . .The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be transmitted to people from wild animals. It then spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing contaminated with these fluids.The disease it causes is a rare but severe and often fatal illness in people. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.
The virus was first discovered in 1976, near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The first outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests.
You can read about Ebola at Wikipedia, but it ain’t pretty. It’s thought to have been transmitted to humans by bats. Here’s a photo of the virion, the complete infective RNA virus particle, which does its damage by glomming onto and entering cells:
Cynthia Goldsmith,. CDC. This colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. See PHIL 1832 for a black and white version of this image. Public domain via Wikimedia commons.
It’s Sunday, May 17, and despite decades of crippling international sanctions, a collapsing domestic economy, and an ongoing blockade, the Iranian regime continues to function. The secret to its endurance, according to Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs researcher Ella Rosenberg, lies in a fundamental disconnect between the Iranian state and the ruling regime itself. While ordinary citizens face skyrocketing prices, severe infrastructural decay, and a genuine possibility of starvation, the regime relies entirely on a robust shadow economy to survive and bypass formal global banking systems.
To maintain this hold on power, the regime sustains itself through a sophisticated web of gray banking and illicit oil sales. Funds are systematically laundered through exchange houses and shell companies situated in free-trade zones in the UAE and Turkey before seamlessly reaching European markets. The problem is that a vessel or shell company can operate cleanly for months, passing basic sanctions screening, only to be officially designated by the Treasury Department long after the illicit funds have been moved and new shells have opened to replace them.
A critical vulnerability in the West’s current approach, Rosenberg argues, is weak enforcement. “Sanctions are like schoolyard bullying,” she explains. “If there is no real enforcement, it’s like a bully who cannot throw a punch. He loses effectiveness.” But things appear to be changing: The UAE has recently taken preliminary steps to close its secrecy banking loopholes, threatening to freeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets flowing through Dubai.
A critical node in this underground economy is the maritime “shadow fleet”—a covert armada of vessels systematically evading global maritime law. To smuggle oil undetected, the regime routinely executes ship-to-ship cargo transfers in open-ocean hotspots like the Gulf of Oman and the coast of Malaysia. Recently, monitoring agencies tracked a sudden, coordinated reappearance of these ships on Automatic Identification System (AIS) radars, only for them to vanish into the shadows mere hours later. This phantom-like behavior is part of a broader, highly sophisticated doctrine of maritime deception: to obscure the movement of sanctioned cargoes, the regime clones tracking numbers, simulates fake port calls, and even deploys “zombie tankers” using the stolen identities of scrapped ships.
Meanwhile, the regime is attempting to project an illusion of macroeconomic stability. After a three-month suspension, Iran will reopen its stock market on Tuesday. “The suspension of stock market activities from the start of the war was aimed at protecting shareholders’ assets, preventing panic-driven trading, and allowing for more transparent pricing conditions,” says Hamid Yari, deputy supervisor at the Securities and Exchange Organization. “Now, with the reopening of the stock market, we will see the full resumption of all capital market sectors.” Beneath this bureaucratic optimism, however, the market threatens to collapse the moment trading floors open. Key industries like petrochemicals and steel—already struggling before the war—have seen their facilities reduced to rubble.
Domestically, the regime has largely abandoned its populace. Decades of zero investment in civil projects have left the country facing severe, preventable water shortages—an ecological crisis the state absurdly blames on Israel using “atmospheric modifier weapons” to make Iranian clouds barren and steal the country’s snow.
While domestic anger is palpable across all demographics, Rosenberg cautions against expecting an imminent revolution. After enduring brutal, militarized crackdowns, Iranian citizens are unlikely to risk their lives again without guaranteed, active backing from the West. Ultimately, the West must understand that the Iranian state isn’t functioning normally; it is merely surviving, and the regime is singularly focused on protecting itself at the expense of its people.
Yep, the Jews are causing a drought, probably using their spaces lasers. Joshing aside, this isn’t good news unless the U.S. understands it. But since Trump seems to have abandoned the Iranian people, he doesn’t care that they’re suffering. We can hope only that his insistence that Iran not have nuclear weapons still holds. Leaving China, he told a reporter that he’d be satisfied if a 20-year prohibition was agreed on. All that means is that the death of Israel and nuclear turmoil in the Middle East will be delayed for a few decades.
*Sadly, Timmy the humpback whale didn’t make it. After being stranded in Germany and towed in a water-filled barge to the North Sea to be released, they found his carcass was found on Friday (h/t Jay). The Guardian reports:
Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency said a whale had been found dead on Friday near the small island of Anholt in the Kattegat, a broad strait between Denmark and Sweden, and confirmed it was Timmy on Saturday.
Jane Hansen, division head at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement: “It can now be confirmed that the stranded humpback whale near Anholt is the same whale that was previously stranded in Germany and was the subject of rescue attempts.”
She added that conditions on Saturday made it possible for a Danish Nature Agency employee to locate and retrieve a tracking device that was fastened to the whale’s back, and “the position and appearance of the device confirm that this is the same whale that had previously been observed and handled in German waters”.
The 10-metre-long calf became a global sensation after it was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters off the coast of Germany, nearly two months ago.
As its health deteriorated, German officials gave up trying to rescue the mammal, saying they believed it could not be freed.
But after a national outcry, two millionaires in Germany said they were prepared to pay “whatever it costs” to release the creature.
The rescue attempt – which is believed to have cost about €1.5m (£1.3m) – involved floating Timmy away from the sandbanks and into a water-filled barge, which was pulled by a tugboat from Wismar Bay near the German city of Lübeck to deeper waters off the coast of Denmark.
It was criticised as “inadvisable” by the International Whaling Commission because the male juvenile, nicknamed Timmy after the beach where he was stranded, appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.
Well, the rescue may have been ‘inadvisable,” but I can’t impugn the two millionaires who funded the rescue. After all, Timmy might have lived.
*Theo Baker, a senior at Stanford University, explains how AI is destroying his well known school in a NYT op-ed called, “What A.I. did to my college class” (article archived here under another title).
Stanford already had a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (now serving a 10-year prison sentence), the crypto fraudster Do Kwon (now serving a 15-year prison sentence) and the founders of Juul (which was forced to pay billions for getting kids hooked on vapes). All of these scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life. Now A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.
Cheating has become omnipresent. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become. As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the “nuclear option” might be called for: allowing faculty to proctor in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate “confidence in the honor” of students.
In our tech-enabled, newly A.I.-powered world, students were increasingly fudging just about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the UberEats credits that the school offered to those in quarantine. Some kids I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. advancement. Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.
In junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail. A friend of mine captured the school’s ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors. It was all, I recall her saying, “just a little bit of fraud.”
About halfway through freshman year, some coding classes started requiring students to sign a declaration — “I did not utilize ChatGPT” — to submit each assignment. During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists. The incentive structures were not aligned toward honesty. One could get ahead, quickly, by cutting corners, by focusing on self-presentation.
The money is a big part of it. A.I. has merely accelerated a trend that was already underway at Stanford and has been reflected by many of the country’s most corporatized universities: Education itself can be seen as a secondary goal to enabling future success, frequently defined as a future windfall.
I like to think that AI can be licked with proctoring in-class exams, but as for term papers or take-home exams, fuhgedaboutit. And remember, the future leaders of American are not only fine with big-time cheating, but won’t learn to write or think. Oy!
Roughly 200 protesters organized by PAL-Awda surrounded Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn on Monday—the same group that targeted Park East Synagogue in Manhattan last week—chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” and waving a Hezbollah flag through the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Police arrested four people after clashes. Department of Justice civil rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon said federal officials were “working with colleagues in NYC to collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, who is Jewish and previously served as the state Democratic Party’s vice chair, announced Monday he was registering as an independent, saying “acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders, and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”
Kentucky PAC Ad Targets Jewish Donor with Rainbow Star of David
A political action committee supporting Representative Thomas Massie’s Kentucky primary campaign aired an ad depicting Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer—overlaid with a Star of David colored in rainbow Pride flag colors—claiming he would bring “trans madness to Kentucky.”
Rand Paul’s Son Goes on Antisemitic Tirade at D.C. Bar
William Paul, son of Senator Rand Paul, accosted New York representative Mike Lawler at a Washington bar Tuesday night, telling him that if Representative Massie loses his Kentucky primary, it will be because of “your people”—then launched into what Lawler described as a “roughly 10-minute diatribe about Israel, about Jews.” Lawler clarified he wasn’t Jewish, to which Paul apologized—“I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.” Paul issued an apology the next day, attributing the remarks to a drinking problem.
New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Ramming Chabad Headquarters
Dan Sohail pleaded guilty Wednesday to ramming his vehicle into Chabad’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. called it an intentional attack on “a globally significant Jewish religious institution,” citing the case as part of increasing violence aimed at Jewish institutions. Sohail faces up to three years in prison.
California Judge Removes Jewish DA from Case for Fighting Antisemitism
A Santa Clara County judge disqualified District Attorney Jeff Rosen—who is Jewish—and his entire office from retrying five pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for occupying the office of Stanford University’s president, ruling that Rosen had created a conflict of interest by calling the case an act of antisemitism on a campaign website. “This case is not a hate crime,” Judge Kelley Paul said. “The characterization of the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism runs afoul of case law.” The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the ruling “uniquely targets minority prosecutors.” The case now passes to California’s attorney general.
Swastika Flag Raised Above NYU Building During Graduation Week
As hundreds of students and families gathered for NYU’s annual Grad Alley block party Wednesday evening, a flag bearing two swastikas, a Star of David, and “NYU” was raised above the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development—named for Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy Steinhardt. Michael is the co-founder of the organization Taglit Birthright Israel. Campus Safety removed the flag after about 15 minutes, and the NYPD has announced its Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incident.
There are more from Europe, but you get the point.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is rebuking Andrzej and protecting the garden:
Hili: Don’t do it.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You take flowers for the vase first, and then you get upset with yourself for having done it.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie rób tego.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Najpierw bierzesz kwiaty do wazonu, a potem się złościsz, żeś to zrobił.
From Masih: two Iranian women shot in the eyes for protesting; one is completely blind. The caption is heartbreaking:
These two Iranian women were both shot in the eyes by the Islamic Republic for one simple “crime”: demanding freedom in the streets and refusing to hide their beautiful hair.
With the help of some German organization, we managed to help smuggle them out of Iran. Now they live in… pic.twitter.com/GihPReEzz4
From Luana, the Haidt saga continues as he’s booed during an NYU commencement speech. You can see some of the booing here, along with an analysis by Jonathan Turley.
Booing Jonathan Haidt is a “shame and a disgrace,” as my grandmother would say. pic.twitter.com/JXlxspp2GI
— cats with powerful impression 🐾 (@catshealdeprsn) May 15, 2026
From Keith, a cute, fluffy butterfly. You can see a video of it walking here.
From Luana; the gross exaggeration of indigenous children’s death in Kamloops, British Columbia. It’s driven some Canadians into a frenzy, but there are no more deaths than expected in the cohort: 11 total. (It’s a thread.)
Kamloops Residential School
Death of Pupils 1935-1945
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the rarely observed larval stage of a fish:
This is the first ever video footage of the larval stage of an extremely rare Groenveld’s Stingfish (Minous groeneveldi).Shot on scuba, over very deep water, far offshore, while drifting with the plankton, at night. #groenveldsstingfish #blackwaterdiving #larvalfish #tulamben #stonefish
We hope this post about orphaned negatives makes you gruntled.An ‘orphaned negative’ is a word that SHOULD feel like it has a related word, but doesn’t.‘Nonchalant’ is an orphaned negative because there is no ‘chalant.’
Here are some more unpaired words with the ‘word’ that one would think would be related.disgusting / gustingincognito / cognitoinnocent / nocentnonplussed / plussedoff-putting / puttingrepeat / peat
I did one of my favorite shopping expeditions today, stocking up on groceries in Chinatown. A giant supermarket opened there in the last couple of years, and it has everything one would want for Chinese food, including the hoisin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, and Botan Calrose short-grained rice that I favor. But there are many, many aisles of things that aren’t even labeled in English, and tons of goodies like the first two shown below. I love wandering the aisles (usually I’m the only white guy there, and certainly the only Jew), so it takes me much longer to shop than I usually do. They also have Chinese pastries, including various buns and cakes that are perfect for a weekend breakfast. Also congee and crullers.
About the title above: no, this, it isn’t food for cats, but cat-shaped food for humans, plus a “veggie cat” nail salon downstairs. The Chinese do love their cats, and it shows in the many products emblazoned with moggies. The “good luck cat” (maneki-neko in Japanese), raising its hand to wish you prosperity, is ubiquitous, and is on this first group of cat pastries:
I have a reclining maneki-neko in my office that is solar powered, so it waves its paw when the sun is out. No good luck on overcast days!
I’d never seen this one before: cat-shaped butter-and-cheese cookies in a great package. Now I’m sorry I didn’t buy them:
And this was downstairs, but closed on Sunday. What on earth is a “veggie cat,” and what does it have to do with fingernails?
Bill Maher continues his defense of Israel on the country’s birthday by pointing out the pervasive Israel-dissing of the mainstream media, adding that there is one thing that the American Left and Right agree on: Israel is the “monster country of all time” (he includes the NYT in this category). He also calls out Democrats, professors, influencers and young people for hating on the Jewish state. Some of the quotes Maher gives will curl the soles of your shoes. As he says, “Jew hatred isn’t just acceptable, now; it’s cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy; it’s the new Che Guevara tee shirt.”
The guests on view are Dan Jones, a historian and author of Castles: A Fortified History, and David French, New York Times columnist and co-host of the podcast Advisory Opinions. I wonder what French thought of Maher’s slap at the NYT at 1:44.
This is more serious and less funny than his usual bits, but it’s a good one.
British physicist and science popularizer Phil Halper emailed me about two new surveys he and others had conducted with 1675 physicists, asking their views about fundamental questions in the field. This is not, of course, a guide to the truth, but simply a snapshot of where physicists stand on things like quantum gravity, black holes, and the Big Bang. The links to the surveys are in the text below, sent by Phil. I’ll highlight a few of their stands on interesting (to me) issues. Phil’s words are indented:
My co-authors and I just released the largest survey of physicists ever done. In conjunction with the American Physical Society we got more than 1600 replies to our Big Mysteries Survey.
What’s relevant for debates between believers and non believers is that we only got a large consensus on one topic and that is the Big Bang should be understood only as a theory that says the universe evolved from a hot dense state that says nothing at all about a beginning of time . Interestingly, we got 68% in both this large survey of a broad cross section of physicists and for a smaller scale survey we did of leading physicists in Copenhagen with the Niels Bohr Institute. This seriously undermines William Lane Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument which is defended by claiming that physicists agree that the Big Bang has shown that the universe had a beginning, we now have strong empirical evidence that physicists think no such thing.
On the fine tuning argument the most popular answer was that constants are brute facts that need no explanation. This was found in both of our survey and in the Phil papers survey of philosophers.
JAC: The Copenhagen Survey involved views of 151 physicists attending a conference on black holes in 2024.
And there is a video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani discussing the results here. [JAC: I’ve put the video below.]
You might also enjoy the recent debate I did on science, cosmology and faith with Stephen Meyer here.
I haven’t yet watched the videos, but I did look at the big survey; you can access the pdf for free by clicking on the screenshot below:
First, a bit of methodology from the paper:
In the summer of 2024, a survey was conducted at the Black Hole Inside Out Conference in Copenhagen to assess physicists’ views on a range of ongoing controversies [1]. Eighty-five scientists responded. One year later, the authors collaborated with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on a substantially larger follow-up survey, which polled 1,675 participants from the magazine’s readership and the members of the American Physical Society. The Physics Magazine survey therefore provides a broader view of attitudes within the physics community and allows comparisons with the more focused conference-based Copenhagen sample.
Taken together, the two surveys make it possible to compare views expressed in a specialist conference setting with those expressed by a much larger and more heterogeneous respondent pool. On some topics, the results are remarkably similar; on others, the differences are substantial. This paper presents the Big Mysteries Survey results, offers commentary on their interpretation, and highlights points of agreement and divergence relative to the Copenhagen survey
Here are a few bar charts from the paper. First, what the Big Bang implies (Sean Carroll explains this at the beginning of the video below). A big majority of physicists think that the Big Bang says nothing about whether it marked the ‘beginning of time”:
Of course tyros like me have no idea why the Big Bang doesn’t imply the beginning of time, but so be it: all of this is above my pay grade but I’m happy to see where physicists stand on these issues now.
What about cosmic inflation? A bit more than half of physicists think that cosmic inflation (the expanding universe) explains “an unexpected uniformity” of the universe.
Dark matter: does it explain anomalies in the rate of rotation of galaxies? No consensus:
Also no consensus on whether dark energy explains the accelerating expansion of the Universe:
There’s no consensus on why the universe’s physical constants appear to be “fine-tuned” for the existence of worlds that can produce life. (This is a favorite theological argument for God.) The “brute facts” explanation brings a stop to searching for explanations, but only 26% of physicists hold it. 20%—and I think this includes Carroll—think it’s explained by a multiverse.
There are more graphs, but I’ll show just one more. What kind of picture of the Universe is provided by quantum mechanics? The Copenhagen explanatoin, which people like me can’t reconcile with physical reality, is the favored explanation. I believe it was Feynman who said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t. I’m still baffled by the issue of quantum entanglement, and don’t even understand the experiments buttressing it.
And here’s the video with Sean Caroll, Niayesh Afshordi, and Ghazal Geshnizjani. Carroll, as usual, gives some very succinct and lucid explanations. The other physicists are good as well.
Have a look at the paper for more opinions, including about what black holes mean and what they do.
Send in your wildlife photos! I am almost out. Thank you in advance.
Today we have miscellaneous photos from the Catskills taken by reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.
Here is another batch of pictures from my hikes in the Central Catskills this April and May. They are not too artistic, given the fast pace that a weekend backpacking hike demands, but they give a sample of what common animals a casual hiker can see in these “mountains” (the Catskills are an eroded plateau and, despite being steep in places, they are too low to have an alpine zone).
White‑tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), right in the parking lot at a cloudy sunrise. It was slurping water from a muddy puddle despite a clear stream flowing nearby, so it must have been leftover salt that attracted this ungulate. Woodstock residents like their roads well salted. One has to drive carefully at dusk around Woodstock, as there are many deer browsing on lawns and gardens.
In the woodland, I found the first of many red efts of the Eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). This is an intermediate land stage of development between the aquatic larva and adult forms. Red efts have lungs, but air exchange through the skin is also important, supplying 30–40% of their oxygen demand. They travel through the forest litter when it is humid enough—after rain or in the early morning:
This is probably a blue‑headed vireo (Vireo solitarius), collecting nesting materials. If my identification is correct, then it is not possible to tell a male from a female, as they are sexually monomorphic and share rearing duties almost equally. Interestingly, however, a female may desert the nest just before fledging to mate with another available male:
Possibly an Eastern comma (Polygonia comma), found at higher elevation:
Black‑and‑white warbler (Mniotilta varia). I think this is a male. If so, he may be led by a female into the territory of another male to provoke a fight and allow her to judge his fitness. These birds occupy a similar niche to nuthatches and brown creepers; they climb and circle tree trunks to find arthropods:
Eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), male. These colorful sparrows hang around the edges of forest clearings:
Eastern American toad (Anaxyrus americanus americanus), hiding in a ramps patch. I wonder whether they would prey on red efts or if the efts’ foul taste would be a deterrent:
While passing through oak woods rich with acorns, I heard many alarm chirps from Eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus). Most made themselves scarce as I approached, but one remained on guard duty:
Not a good picture, but here is a dark‑eyed junco (Junco hyemalis). These are hardy birds, staying year‑round in the forest. In winter they form close‑knit flocks with a few dominant individuals and a strict pecking order:
Chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina) on the side of a quiet road. These migrate to more southern states in winter and in summer nest closer to human settlements:
Mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa). There were a couple of them in the area, continuously jousting in the air for control of the territory. I see them every spring in that exact spot, but this year they were too engaged in battling each other to stay still, so this is a picture taken a few years back:
Brown creeper(Certhia americana), shown here just a moment after eating a couple of mayflies. They are common enough, but I rarely see them due to their near‑perfect camouflage. Without directly comparing the bill length it is difficult to tell a female from a male:
Welcome to the Sabbath for gentile cats: Sunday, May 17, 2026, and also National Pack Rat Day. Pack rats are really, according to Wikipedia, “any species in the North and Central American rodent genusNeotoma.” You can see where they get their name in the short video below.
Here are some edible mushrooms on sale in the UK, including slices of the delectable giant puffball, which you can fry up in butter like fungal steaks.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License, NathanLee
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 17 Wikipedia page.
I had a dream last night, which I remembered as I kept waking up. In the last bit, I was walking through a devastated post-apocalyptic city with a beautiful blonde girl, who must have been my girlfriend as we were holding hands. There was background music from Billie Eilish. At some point she gestured at a half-destroyed skyscraper and said, “That looks like an Edward Hopper painting,” but then proceeded to tell me the differences between the building and a Hopper. It also became clear that she was going to kill herself. It was a sad dream.
Posting will be light today as I’ll be out and about doing chores.
President Trump has described a potential multibillion-dollar weapons sale to Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” with China, raising new doubts about the pace and scale of American military support for the island democracy.
Taiwan’s government has been waiting for months for Mr. Trump to sign off on a $14 billion package of missiles, anti-drone equipment and air-defense systems intended to fortify the island against Beijing’s military threats.
Mr. Trump himself had pressured Taiwan to spend more on its own defense. Now he is using the very arms his administration had pushed the island to buy as leverage with China, the United States’ main adversary.
Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One after leaving China on Friday that he had discussed the weapons package with China’s president, Xi Jinping, during their summit this past week in Beijing. He was asked in an interview with Fox News whether he would approve the Taiwan deal.
“No, I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China,” he said in the interview, which was recorded in Beijing but aired after he left. “It depends.”
“It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly,” he said. “It’s a lot of weapons.”
He did not go into details about what he wanted in return, but Mr. Trump has pushed China to make major purchases of American airplanes, ethanol, soybeans, beef and sorghum.
His comments appear to undermine the assurances to Taiwan from some in his own administration that U.S. support for the island is steadfast and nonnegotiable. Before the summit, a bipartisan group of senators had urged against letting support for Taiwan become a bargaining chip with China.
I didn’t expect this move from Trump and I think it’s a bad one. Taiwan, like Israel, is a small democracy seen as illegitimate by large and nearby authoritarian powers. We should be supporting such democracies, not threatening to withhold weapons from them. Remember China is grumbling about taking over the island. How many soybeans is a democracy worth?
Taiwan has insisted it is a sovereign, independent nation, after US President Donald Trump cautioned it against formally declaring independence from China.
Trump’s remarks came after a two-day summit in Beijing, after which he said he had “made no commitment either way” about the self-governing island – which China claims as part of its territory and has not ruled out taking by force.
The US administration is bound by law to provide Taiwan with a means of self-defence, but has frequently had to square this alliance with maintaining a diplomatic relationship with China.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has previously stated that Taiwan does not need to declare formal independence because it already sees itself as a sovereign nation.
On Saturday, presidential spokesperson Karen Kuo said it was “self-evident” that Taiwan was “a sovereign, independent democratic country”.
She added, however, that Taiwan was committed to maintaining the status quo with China – in which Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.
Many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation, though most are in favour of maintaining their current status.
Washington’s established position is that it does not support Taiwanese independence, with continued ties with Beijing being contingent on its acceptance that there is only one Chinese government.
In an interview with Fox News after meetings with President Xi, Trump reiterated that US policy on Taiwan had not changed, while making it clear he did not seek conflict with Beijing.
I’ve learned that the politics of Taiwan are complicated, overshadowed by China’s repeated statements that it wants to absorb Taiwan. The Taiwanese, of course, who live in a democracy that has considerable freedoms, don’t want that, though a few minor political parties do favor unification (and about 5%-10% of Taiwanese don’t oppose its occuring in the forseeable future). Trump, however, seems to think he has the right to not only turn countries more democratic (viz., Cuba) but also less democratic, as with Taiwan.
Israel killed Hamas’s military leader in Gaza, eliminating a long-sought target as it continues to hunt down militants linked to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack despite a continuing cease-fire.
Ezzedin al-Haddad, a Hamas veteran who took over as military commander after his predecessor was killed, died Friday evening in an airstrike in Gaza City, Israel said. He had helped plan the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 dead and around 250 as hostages in Gaza, and Israel said he was working to rebuild the group’s military capabilities when he was killed.
Israel said it sent warplanes to strike Haddad shortly after turning up intelligence on his location. Witnesses in Gaza City said they heard loud explosions in Al-Rimal neighborhood around 8 p.m. local time.
Hamas confirmed Haddad’s death. Another militant group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said he was killed alongside his wife, daughter and other Palestinians in what it called a violation of the cease-fire in place since October under a peace plan brokered by President Trump.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was carrying out its policy of acting pre-emptively against threats.
It wasn’t clear how many people were killed in the operation. Palestinian health authorities said 13 people were killed and 57 injured in Gaza in the past 48 hours, without saying how many were combatants.
Remember that Hamas’s disbanding and disarmament is part of Phase 2 of Trump’s peace plan, but Hamas has repeatedly refused to do this, and in fact is rearming and tightening its grip on Gaza. For all I know, it may be digging new tunnels. Hamas will not go inactive unless Israel withdraws fully from Gaza, gets unspecified “international guarantees,” and, most ludicrous, makes progress towards statehood. The last stipulation is for the present impossible, which means that Hamas will remain an active terrorist organization in Israel. And since its existence threatens Israel (that’s in its charter), Israel seems justified in continuing to extirpate the group.
*Although universities across the US have ratcheted down their DEI initiatives, often it is is in name only, sometimes just eliminating the “E” from the acronym. The City Journal reports that at the University of Wisconsin at Madison DEI is going as strong as ever (h/t Luana).
Universities across the country have wound down their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in recent years, following criticism of the programs’ patterns of racial discrimination and compelled speech. In some cases, DEI roles were not removed but simply renamed and moved to other departments. In fact, a recent Inside Higher Ed survey found that 43 percent of universities have rebranded their DEI initiatives. The names change; the agenda remains the same.
Minnesota parent Matthew Stanton saw what this rebrand looked like firsthand at the University of Wisconsin–Madison when accompanying his daughter for a school visit in April. UW–Madison’s School of Education is the nation’s top-ranked education department—a big draw for Stanton’s daughter, who wants to be an elementary school teacher. But when Stanton arrived at the School of Education, he was met with a “disturbing exhibit” in the building’s main concourse.
A red sweatshirt read, “All White People are Racist.” One sign said, “UW’s Free Speech = White Supremacy,” accompanied by the school’s badger mascot wearing a KKK hood and holding a noose. Student publication The Madison Federalist also found a sweatshirt showing the severed heads of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
The exhibit was entitled “Da Hoodzeum presents: In Direct Action—A decade of Activist Art at University of Wisconsin–Madison.” It was part of the university’s annual Line Breaks festival, hosted by the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative (OMAI) from March 20 to April 24. OMAI was originally in the university’s former DEI division, parts of which were moved to the Division for Teaching & Learning last year.
Michael Davis, Da Hoodzeum’s curator and a UW–Madison education doctoral student, compiles artifacts that focus on a “radical aspect of history.” (Davis did not respond to a request for comment.) A description of the April 24 exhibit said that it shows “how activist art at UW is . . . part of an ongoing tradition of creativity as action, care, and collective struggle.”
University spokesman John Lucas told City Journal via email that the “display did not represent the views of UW–Madison or its School of Education, which support free expression,” that the university “did not receive complaints” about the display, and that “no university funding was provided to the exhibit.”
But the exhibit was part of a public university-sponsored event. In such events, “the university has the power to determine what art is displayed,” according to Zach Greenberg, Director of Faculty Legal Defense at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. OMAI’s festival consisted of “invited professional artists” and students selected into the university’s First Wave full-tuition Hip-Hop & Urban Arts scholarship program.
As an administrative unit, OMAI also can’t claim the same protections of academic freedom that an academic department could. “We’re not talking about a case where a professor says something controversial in class,” Manhattan Institute Constitutional Studies Director Ilya Shapiro said. “Instead, it’s about viewpoint discrimination by a public school that’s bound by the First Amendment not to play favorites among political positions.” That seems to run contrary to UW–Madison’s institutional neutrality policy, which it adopted in 2024.
You be the judge: does this violate institutional neutrality given that OMAI is is an “administrative unit”. To me this looks like free speech, though it’s certainly not free speech that promotes inclusion. “All White People are Racists” comes straight from Kendi or DiAngelo, and is itself racist. And no, free speech does not equal white supremacy; this very exhibit disproves that.
*I’m a sucker for lists like the Guardian’s new compilation of “100 greatest novels of all time“. You can tick off the ones you’ve read here, and nominate your top three novels here.
Here is my score: not impressive but not bad, I think, for a scientist:
From the intro:
As Stephen King points out, compiling a list of the greatest novels of all time is an impossible task. King is one of more than 170 novelists, critics and academics the Guardian polled for their top 10, ranked in order, which we tallied to compile an overall 100. But, as he argued, 10 books is “not enough!” On King’s list there is, he’s sorry to say, “not a single Dickens”; he wishes he’d found space for David Copperfield or Oliver Twist.
One Day author David Nicholls’s choices are “definitely skewed towards novels I read at an impressionable age”, he says. Bernardine Evaristo listed “some of my all‑time favourites, including several classics of the past 100 years”. Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, Elif Shafak, Ian McEwan, Maggie O’Farrell, Colm Tóibín, Lorrie Moore, Katherine Rundell and many more have all cast their votes.
Never has such a list been more needed. Dwindling attention spans, screens, Netflix; whatever we blame, reading for pleasure is a dying pursuit. Half of adults in the UK say they never read, and levels among children and young people are at their lowest in 20 years. This year has been declared the National Year of Reading to address this crisis. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all,” Henry David Thoreau advised. We are here to help.
. . . Our list includes any book published in English, but originally written in any language. It is still partial – all lists are. Neither can we make a claim to being definitive – this is literature, not science. Is the best novel one that changes the genre, society or the individual? One that captures the zeitgeist, or has an afterlife far beyond its pages. Or a novel that scorches itself so deeply into your soul you can remember exactly when and where you were when you first read it? None of these criteria on their own is enough. My Proustian madeleine will be your raw potato. My Mrs Dalloway your Mrs Bridge. But we hope that in asking those who devote their days to the craft and understanding of fiction from around the globe, the result is as authoritative, ambitious and far-reaching as possible.
Here are the top ten novels with the lowest number being the highest rank (there’s a “see the full list here” link).
Middlemarch
Beloved
Ulysses
In Search of Lost Time
Anna Karenina
War and Peace
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Madame Bovary
The Great Gatsby
I have read all of these save one–the wearying book book by Proust (#4). I took it to Paris years ago but couldn’t even get through the first volume—and that was in the English translation. The highest-ranking book by a living author is Salman Rusdie’s Midnight’s Children.
If you want to participate, do go to the site and tick off the books you’ve read, and then put the number below. I’m sure many will beat me, but I still claim that scientists are better read in literature than nonscientists are about science. How many nonscientists have read On the Origin of Species or even A Brief History of Time?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is mournful, in search of lost time:
Andrzej: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m thinking back to the good times.
Masih points out the people who, like her, have fled Iran against their will to find freedom and preserve their lives. The translation from Farsih:
When a person is forced to leave their homeland to save their life, future, and freedom, migration is no longer a “choice”; it is a narrative of exile, fear, instability, and the struggle to survive. Thousands of Iranian refugees and students abroad live every day amid psychological pressures, residency issues, discrimination, insecurity, and separation from family; lives that are often unseen, yet real. In this live conversation, we will discuss the hidden suffering of forced migration, the crisis of Iranian refugees, the situation of students abroad, and the responsibility the global community has toward these individuals.
With: Saba Alaleh, Mousa Borzin, Nazi Seddiqi, Shilan Bahrami, Nafiseh Norad, Hanieh Nemattollahi. Host: Mozhgan Keshavarz
وقتی انسان مجبور میشود برای نجات جان، آینده و آزادیاش وطنش را ترک کند، مهاجرت دیگر «انتخاب» نیست؛
روایتیست از تبعید، ترس، بیثباتی و تلاش برای زنده ماندن.
هزاران پناهجو و دانشجوی ایرانی خارج از کشور، هر روز میان فشارهای روانی، مشکلات اقامتی، تبعیض، ناامنی و دوری از خانواده… pic.twitter.com/m25Co6d5GS
— United Against Gender Apartheid (@UAGApartheid) May 15, 2026
From Luana; a parallel:
After losing World War II, Germany lost 25% of its territory and 14 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe.
And yet there hasn’t been a single case of Germans hijacking planes, blowing themselves up, or committing terrorist attacks like Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/3Bt6dZAPnu
Two from my feed. The first has always been a great idea: allow violent prisoners to take care of homeless cats. Watch the video! Both the staff and the cats are better off:
— Farm Girl Carrie 👩🌾 (@FarmGirlCarrie) May 16, 2026
This is apparently legal, but it’s hateful. In NYC, Muslims say their prayers right outside a Jewish school. Perhaps Mayor Mamdani could have a quiet word with the pray-ers, but he won’t:
This is an ALL GIRLS Jewish school in my district. I’m all for prayer and free speech, but why do a bunch of GROWN MEN need to do this right outside of a school full of little Jewish girls??? Is not this what MOSQUES are for? Is this intentional? Mayor Mamdani @NYCMayor any words… pic.twitter.com/iFRPnGVblQ
— Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (@InnaVernikov) May 15, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Norwegian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 7 years old and would be 91 today had he lived. https://t.co/DHiFinswOx
