Category: Hili Dialogue

Friday: Hili dialogue

June 6, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, June 6, 2025, and it’s both Atheist Pride Day and Hug an Atheist Day. Below is a picture of the actual vinyl record album I was listening to in 1967 when I had my instant conversion to atheism. You can read about it here (archived):

It’s also National Applesauce Cake Day, National Fish & Chip Day,  the anniversary of D-Day in 1944, National Churro Day, National Doughnut Day, and National Higher Education Day,  And tomorrow is Graduation Day at the University of Chicago.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has instituted a new ban on travelers coming from 12 countries. 

President Trump on Wednesday signed a travel ban on 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, reviving an effort from his first term to prevent large numbers of immigrants and visitors from entering the United States.

The ban, which goes into effect on Monday, bars travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Mr. Trump also imposed restrictions, but stopped short of a full ban, on travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. People from those countries cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas.

The decision resurrects a policy from Mr. Trump’s first term, which caused chaos at airports and led to legal challenges. It is the latest move in Mr. Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration, after he blocked asylum at the southern border, barred international students from Harvard University and ordered immigration raids across the country.

The decision came days after an Egyptian man in Colorado was arrested and charged with carrying out an attack on a group honoring hostages being held in Gaza. Trump administration officials had warned that there would be a crackdown after that attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Mr. Trump said in a video message announcing the travel ban. “We don’t want them.”

Egypt was not on the list of banned countries.

The current version of the travel ban is more likely to withstand legal scrutiny than Mr. Trump’s initial efforts during his first term, legal experts said.

Here’s the NYT map of countries from which travel is banned (red) or from which visas are restricted (orange).

I can see the reasons for restrictions on some but not all of these countries. But damn, I want to go to Cuba, and Americans can’t go there unless they’re part of a formal exchange, have special permission, or are doing group travel.

*By a vote of 14-1, with the one dissenter being the U.S., the U.N. Security Council vetoed a resolution for a cease-fire in Israel, along with the release of the hostages and other things. The U.S. vote blocked the resolution.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and the resumption of full-scale humanitarian aid deliveries to the enclave.

Ten nonpermanent members of the 15-seat Council had put forth the resolution for a vote. It was the first time since President Trump took office that the Council had considered a cease-fire resolution on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The United States was the only member to vote against the measure; the other 14 members of the Council, including Russia, voted in favor, once again highlighting Washington’s isolation on the global stage over its policy of unconditional support of Israel.

“We believe this text reflects the consensus shared by all Council members that the war in Gaza has to come to an immediate halt, all hostages must be immediately and unconditionally released, and civilians in Gaza must not starve and must have full and unimpeded access to aid,” said a joint statement from the 10 nonpermanent members, which was read by Slovenia’s ambassador to the U.N., Samuel Zbogar, at the Council meeting ahead of the vote.

A Security Council resolution must receive nine votes in favor and no vetoes from the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — to be adopted. Since the war broke out after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, the United States has vetoed four Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire and has abstained from one, allowing it to pass, last June.

Dorothy Camille Shea, the interim U.S. representative at the U.N., repeated Washington’s message that Israel had the right to defend itself, and she blamed Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians, saying the war would end if the group surrendered.

“Any product that undermines our close ally Israel’s security is a nonstarter,” Ms. Shea said, explaining the “no” vote.

The NYT then repeats a story that, as I’ve explained before, has been debunked:

Gazan officials said that on June 1, Israeli soldiers shot and killed more than 20 Palestinians standing in line to receive aid. The Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots toward “suspects” who approached them.

The countries voting for a ceasefire include the four other permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, the UK and the Russian Federation), and the nonpermanent members (Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Somalia).  Shame on these countries: do they have a solution to the problem of Hamas?  And aid is being distributed in Israel, with the “starvation” problem reflecting not an Israeli-imposed dearth of food (there was enough food in Gaza to last 6-8 months before the temporary blockade) but the wholesale theft of food by Hamas, which either sequesters it or sells it on the open market.  Further, there is no way that Hamas would even obey this UN resolution, for if it releases all the hostages, it loses its only bargaining chip.

* The James Webb telescope has discovered, the most distant galaxy ever found and therefore one of the earliest galaxies formed.  Remember that the Big Bang occurred about 13.8 billion years ago, and this galaxy was formed about 0.003 billion years after that (it would have been nice had they done the calculation):

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) excels at a lot of things, but there are two things it does better than any other scientific instrument in human history: spotting early galaxies and breaking its own records!

Now, the $10 billion NASA space telescope has done both things again, detecting a galaxy that existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, a feat that the team behind this research has dubbed a “cosmic miracle.”

Currently, as the earliest and most distant galaxy ever detected, this “the mother of all early galaxies,” this new JWST discovery has been fittingly designated “MoM z14.”

“First and foremost, at the moment, this is the most distant object known to humanity. That title changes every so often, but I find it is always cause for pause and reflection,” team member and Yale University professor of Astronomy and Physics Pieter van Dokkum told Space.com. “MoM z14 existed when the universe was about 280 million years old – we’re getting quite close to the Big Bang.

“Just to put that in context, sharks have been around on Earth for a longer timespan!”

Since it began sending data back to Earth in the summer of 2022, the JWST has excelled in detecting galaxies at so-called “high redshifts.”

Redshift refers to the phenomenon of the wavelength of light from distant and thus early sources being stretched and shifted toward the “red end” of the electromagnetic spectrum as it traverses expanding space.

The earlier and thus further away an object is, the greater the redshift.

But we know even more: we know what elements are in those stars!

The presence of carbon and nitrogen in MoM z14 indicates that there are earlier galaxies to be discovered than this 13.52 billion-year-old example.

That is because the very earliest galaxies in the universe and their stars were filled with the simplest elements in the cosmos, hydrogen and helium.

Later galaxies would be populated by these heavier elements, which astronomers somewhat confusingly call “metal,” as their stars forged them and then dispersed them in supernova explosions.

“MoM z14 is not one of the very first objects that formed in the universe, as the stars in those galaxies are composed of hydrogen and helium only – we would not see carbon or nitrogen,” van Dokkum said. “It could be part of the first wave of formation of ‘normal’ galaxies, that is, the first galaxies that have elements like nitrogen and carbon – but we’ve thought that before!”

Here’s the galaxy with the caption, “1 × 1′′ NIRCam RGB images (F090W, F115W, F277W) spanning 0.90-2.77 μm show a red compact source that is visible at ≳2 μm, but absent in short-wavelength bands.”

licensed under the CC Attribution 4.0 International license.

That James Webb Space Telescope is fricking amazing! It always stuns me when I realize that we can find out these truths about the universe, and do so using only stuff made from what we can wrest from our own soil and atmosphere and then make into various instruments.

*The WSJ proclaims that the Houthis are not only remarkably successful is hitting ships going through the Red Sea, but have in fact brought the U.S. to a stalemate:

Officials are now dissecting how a scrappy adversary was able to test the world’s most capable surface fleet. The Houthis proved to be a surprisingly difficult foe, engaging the Navy in its fiercest battles since World War II despite fighting from primitive quarters and caves in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The Houthis benefited from the proliferation of cheap missile and drone technology from Iran. They fired antiship ballistic missiles, the first-ever combat use of the Cold War-era weapon, and they innovated how they deployed their weaponry. The latest technologies have transformed maritime warfare, much the way they have rewritten the script for land wars in Ukraine—forcing militaries to adapt in real time. The U.S. is developing fresh ways to intercept the newest drones and missiles but still relies largely on expensive defense systems.

. . .Some 30 vessels participated in combat operations in the Red Sea from late 2023 through this year, around 10% of the Navy’s total commissioned fleet. In that time, the U.S. rained down at least $1.5 billion worth of munitions on the Houthis, a U.S. official said.

The Navy was able to destroy much of the Houthis’ arsenal—but it has yet to achieve the strategic goal of restoring shipping through the Red Sea, and the Houthis continue to regularly fire missiles at Israel.

Military and congressional leaders who have begun scrutinizing the campaign for lessons worry about the strain of such grueling deployments on overall force readiness. The Pentagon is also investigating the lost planes and a separate at-sea collision—incidents that all involved the Truman strike group—with results expected in the coming months.

Central Command—also known as Centcom, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East—declined to comment on ongoing investigations or on the campaign’s performance and impact.

The effects of the deployment will be felt for years. It drew resources from efforts in Asia to deter China and pushed back maintenance schedules for carriers. That could create critical gaps in the second half of the decade, when the giant warships will have no choice but to dock for service.

Despite the wear and tear, Navy officials said the fight with the Houthis offered invaluable combat experience, and the Red Sea conflict is viewed inside the Pentagon as a warm-up for a potential “high-end” conflict with China.

I presume the last sentence refers to U.S. involvement in a potential invasion of Taiwan by China, something that may be happening sooner than 2027, when China hinted it would invade the island nation.

*The Washington Post reports on a paper from the Royal Society’s Biology Letters recounting how in several places around Sydney, Australia, cockatoos will line up along a fence to take their turn drinking from a water fountain, turning on the fountain with their powerful feet.

Each night around sundown, cockatoos in western Sydney gather for a ritual: After waiting in line on a fence, they take turns at a drinking fountain, gripping the handle with their feet and leaning forward to release a bubbling stream of cool water.

The complex maneuver requires strength, fine motor skills and a healthy dose of innovation. It has been documented for the first time in what researchers say constitutes a new “urban-adapted local tradition” — providing an insight into how the birds change their behavior in response to their environment.

That’s according to a study published Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters focused on sulphur-crested cockatoos — large sociable parrots with white bodies and yellow crests that are commonly found in Sydney.

The “drinking-fountain innovation” is the second time researchers have found the birds adapting their behavior to suit their environment, following a “bin-opening innovation” recorded by the same team in the city’s south, where birds were found to open the lids of household trash cans to access food waste.

Lucy Aplin, an associate professor at the Australian National University and University of Zurich, said the study was carried out as part of the Clever Cockie project, aimed at understanding how city living can drive behavioral change and social sharing. She said cockatoos are an excellent case study, as they are “opportunistic and successful” in human environments, while Australia’s relatively short history of urbanization means that evolutionary changes can be effectively ruled out.

Of course you’ll be wanting to see this behavior, and here it is (the paper will give you more information; the birds are successful only about half the time):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is supervising another job: the fixing of the well by Mariusz, who, married to Paulina, lives upstairs:

A: What are you doing here?
Hili: I’m giving advice to Mariusz about the well repairs.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty tu robisz?
Hili: Doradzam Mariuszowi przy naprawie studni.

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

From CinEmma, a prescription for a d*g:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Things With Faces, a driftwood bunny:

Masih is back again with a new post, and another sad one—another Iranian woman killed by the regime.

From Luana, a crazy courtroom moment (there are others in the thread). This moron, who appeared on video in the courtroom while driving his car (and with a suspended license), is promptly sent to jail:

From Malcolm, birdwatching cats:

Two from my feed. This first one required what the kids call “mad skills”:

. . and two from a thread of the world’s most dangerous jobs:

One that I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish girl, born on this day in 1927, was sent to Auschwitz at age fifteen. She died there.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-06T09:05:00.275Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, about Crick’s notorious parties; clicking will take you to a short clip in which historian Lisa Jardine (daughter of Jacob Bronowski), implies that Crick’s parties were wild, though I”m sure they weren’t the same as Diddy’s “freak offs”:

There isn't much in my CRICK biography (out in November) about the Cricks' notorious Cambridge parties, but this 2011 clip of historian Lisa Jardine will give you some idea of what went on. (And yes, there is a lot of striking new material about Rosalind Franklin and her friendship with the Cricks).

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T08:58:13.633Z

And Colossal Biosciences is now going after its critics (the video at issue is about 90 minutes long!):

A representative of an anonymous client is trying to get me to remove this video conversation with @devoevomed.bsky.social about Colossal Biosciences "dire" wolvesSounds like Dr Lynch's critique of their poor science communication struck a nerve. Check it out herewww.youtube.com/live/C9_gJ6_…

— Flint Dibble (@flintdibble.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T12:57:20.391Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 5, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, June 5, 2020, and National Gingerbread Day. I love the stuff, but it’s best when served with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or, in a pinch, applesauce.  Here are some gingerbread angels at a fair I photographed in Katowice, Poland on December 7 of last year:

It’s also Sausage Roll Day, National Ketchup Day (Heinz is the only acceptable variety), National Moonshine Day, and National Veggie Burger Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*It looks as if the Trump/Musk lovefest is over, given Musk’s reaction to Trump’s “big beautiful budget bill”.  Musk called it a “disgusting abomination.”

Former White House cost-cutting czar Elon Musk called President Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending package a “disgusting abomination,” stepping up his criticism just as the Senate is trying to quickly pass the measure and get it signed into law by July 4.

Musk’s comments are his latest sharp words about the package, which includes tax cuts as well as reductions to spending on Medicaid and food assistance. Last month, he gave new fuel to GOP critics of the Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar agenda, saying that the current measure failed to reduce the federal deficit.

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” said Musk, in comments on his X social-media platform. Musk, who left the administration last week, called the package a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill.” He issued a warning on the midterm elections: “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

“This immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery!” he wrote in an overnight post.

Here’s his tweet (or “X emission”):

The bill narrowly passed the House last month by one vote. It is now in the hands of the Senate, where some fiscal hawks, including Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida, have demanded deeper cuts.

The Senate is aiming to make changes to the bill and then send it back to the House. Backers can afford to lose no more than a handful of GOP votes in either chamber, with all Democrats expected to be opposed. Still, the White House and GOP leaders said that Musk’s statements didn’t shake their confidence in passing the measure.

Trump “already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday when asked about Musk’s social-media post. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”

I don’t know what’s going to happen to this bill, but I for one would prefer that they don’t lower taxes on the very rich and ensure that those who need Medicaid get it.

*At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll give a few excerpts from Colin Wright’s newest post, “Imane Khelif is male—and the evidence was always clear.” As I wrote recently, a test a few years ago revealed that Khelif had XY chromosomes, and thus was a biological male, though he was raised as a female. He won the welterweight gold medal in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics. Despite his indubitable maleness, he Khelif still has his defenders.  Wright:

Rather than accept the biological reality, Khelif and his team launched a carefully staged PR campaign after the Olympics, designed to portray him as hyper-feminine. Social media was flooded with images of Khelif in flowery dresses and heavy makeup, striking exaggeratedly feminine poses. It was a cringe-worthy attempt to sway public opinion with aesthetics rather than facts. But no amount of eyeliner can alter your chromosomes. Womanhood is not achieved through hairspray and posturing; it is a matter of biology.

Despite what should have been a straightforward matter, the media played a central role in confusing the public. Outlets like NPR referred to Khelif as a “female athlete.” The Associated Press described him as someone “assigned female at birth.” GLAAD called him a “cisgender woman,” and The Economic Times chalked up Khelif’s hormonal profile to “endogenous testosterone that is naturally produced.”

Let’s be clear: Khelif is not female. That’s the one fact that actually matters in a women’s sporting category. The other descriptors might be technically accurate within the bizarre framework of gender ideology, but they fail entirely to describe objective reality. If someone is born with XY chromosomes and internal testes due to a DSD like 5-ARD, then the sex recorded on their birth certificate is a clerical error—not a truth that must shape our sporting policies. Calling Khelif “cisgender” because he was misidentified at birth and identifies with that incorrect label is linguistic gymnastics that ignores the fundamental biological truth: Khelif is male.

Of all the distractions thrown up to obscure this reality, none were more absurd than the idea that Khelif’s disqualification in 2023 was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The theory went something like this: because IBA President Umar Kremlev has ties to Vladimir Putin, and because Khelif once beat a prized Russian boxer, the Kremlin retaliated by fabricating Khelif’s DNA test results. This theory ignores several inconvenient facts. First, the IBA allowed Khelif to appeal the ruling, and even offered to cover the costs. Second, the easiest way to discredit Russia would have been to publicly release new, independently verified test results. Instead, Khelif withdrew the appeal, and Algeria sent a legal threat demanding the results be sealed. That doesn’t sound like someone who was confident the test was wrong. It sounds like someone who knew the test was right.

Even more bizarrely, Khelif threatened lawsuits against J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk for spreading what he claimed were lies about his sex. But if those statements were truly false, the path to vindication was simple: release the medical records. Instead, Khelif’s team has fought to keep them hidden while trying to convince the public through press releases and staged photo ops. Meanwhile, everyone with an understanding of basic biology, or frankly just common sense, could already see the truth.

. . . . The lesson here is simple. Had we put truth before ideology from the beginning, this wouldn’t have been a controversy at all. The facts were always there. The science was always clear. If you understood how human sex works and followed the evidence, then this revelation was no revelation at all. It was merely the inevitable emergence of the truth, which has a funny way of eventually surfacing no matter how deep it’s buried.

Blame ideology and the media.  After all, if he thinks of himself as a woman (and he well might have, as he was raised as a female) doesn’t that make him a woman?  Here’s the document at issue:

As Richard Feynman said about the Challenger accident, ““For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

*Mohamed Sabry Soliman, accused of committing the Boulder firebomb attacks on Jews peacefully calling attention to the hostages in Gaza (at least a dozen people were injured), has been taken into custody by ICE—along with his entire family.

Federal authorities said Tuesday that they had taken into custody the family of the man accused of injuring at least a dozen people at a Colorado demonstration to support Israeli hostages in Gaza and that they are expediting their deportation from the United States.

The White House and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said on social media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s wife and five children two days after he allegedly used molotov cocktails to attack marchers in Boulder. Noem said the agency was investigating “to what extent his family knew about the heinous attack” and “if they provided support.”

On its X account, the White House wrote that the family had been placed in expedited removal proceedings and that “THEY COULD BE DEPORTED AS EARLY AS TONIGHT.”

Immigration and criminal defense lawyers struggled Tuesday to recall similar examples of entire families being detained for deportation proceedings immediately after a relative was charged with a crime. And some immigration experts questioned the legality of deporting Soliman’s family members under expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process created in 1996 that does not allow immigrants to have a hearing before an immigration judge. They are also not entitled to a lawyer.

“It’s not normal,” said Derege Demissie, who has been practicing law for nearly 30 years and is a former president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “I don’t remember a situation where family members who are not connected with any criminal activity are targeted by ICE because a close or related family member is charged in connection with a crime.”

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said Tuesday that the State Department had revoked the family’s visitor visas.

There are two questions here. First, if the guy committed terrorism and attempted murder, why are they deporting him rather than putting him on trial?  There’s little doubt of his guilt: there are videos and he was apprehended on the spot. Second, why are they deporting his family? If they entered illegally, well, yes, they can do that because they violated the law, but if they don’t have any evidence that the family was complicit in the attack—and how could they be with five children?—then they can get in line after the deported convicted criminals.  The lack of a trial for an accused attempted murderer baffles me.

*The last jailed member of the Manson Family (save Charles “Tex” Watson), Patricia Krenwinkel has been recommended for parole. She is 77, and was convicted of brutal stabbings in the Tate-LaBianca murders.

Patricia Krenwinkel, a onetime follower of the cult leader Charles Manson who was convicted in the murders of seven people in the summer of 1969 in Los Angeles, should be released on parole, a panel of the California parole board recommended on Friday.

Ms. Krenwinkel, 77, the state’s longest-serving female inmate, is one of two Manson followers connected with the August 1969 murder spree who remain in prison.

She was sent to death row in 1971. After the state’s highest court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, Ms. Krenwinkel’s sentence was reduced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, as it was for all those convicted in the Manson group’s murders.

Ms. Krenwinkel, who has spent the last 54 years in the California Institution for Women in Chino, first became eligible for parole in 1976. This was her 16th appearance before the parole suitability panel.=

The provisional decision has to be reviewed by the legal division of the Board of Parole Hearings. That process can take up to four months, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

If the full board agrees with the panel’s recommendation, Gov. Gavin Newsom has 30 days to review its decision. He could reject it, or send it back for further review.

In 2022, the parole board panel recommended that Ms. Krenwinkel be paroled but Mr. Newsom reversed its decision, according to state records. Mr. Newsom wrote at the time that Ms. Krenwinkel “still poses an unreasonable danger to society if paroled at this time.”

And what she is in for (from Wikipedia):

Krenwinkel was a participant in the murders on August 9, 1969, at 10050 Cielo Drive, home of actress Sharon Tate and four others. After stabbing Abigail Folger, Krenwinkel went back inside and summoned Tex Watson, who also stabbed Folger. During her trial, Krenwinkel said, “I stabbed her and I kept stabbing her.”  When asked how it felt, Krenwinkel replied: “Nothing, I mean, what is there to describe? It was just there, and it was right.”

Krenwinkel participated willingly in more murders the following night. She recounted during her December 29, 2016, parole hearing the events of the night of August 10, 1969.[9] Along with Manson, Watson, Atkins, Clem Grogan, Leslie Van Houten, and Linda Kasabian, she went to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca where she, Watson, and Van Houten murdered the couple.

Here’s a photo of Krenwinkel from 1973:

Fitzgerald Whitney, Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Well, if she’s no longer a danger to society, I think 50 years in jail is a sufficient deterrent to let her go.  I suspect she isn’t going to kill any more people.

*The whole world is baying for Israel’s blood after Hamas leveled an accusation that the IDF killed 30 Gazans as they approached a distribution center for humanitarian aid.  That is most likely false, a confection of the liars at Hamas, yet both the BBC and Washington Post bought the story. Now they  have both retracted their stories.  First, about the WaPo:

The Washington Post on Tuesday filed a correction to a recent article claiming the IDF killed over 30 people near an aid site in Gaza, naming the source as “health officials.”

The article, published Sunday and viewed over two million times before the correction, was changed because the Washington Post claimed it “didn’t meet Post fairness standards.”

According to a social media post on X/Twitter, the article “failed to make clear if attributing the deaths to Israel was the position of the Gaza health ministry or a fact verified by The Post.”

Although the original article included statements from Israel, including an initial inquiry indicating IDF soldiers did not fire at civilians at the aid centers, the newspaper admitted it didn’t “give proper weight to Israel’s denial and gave improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role in the shootings.”

. . .The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution center in Rafah denied on Sunday claims that the IDF attacked a food distribution point near Rafah, contradicting widely circulated Hamas reports.

Security camera footage from Sunday’s aid distribution site shows calm civilian activity, with no incidents reported. Aid was delivered without disruption, and the available evidence does not support claims of injuries or fatalities. While some media outlets have reported these allegations, others have contacted the organization to verify the facts, the GHF stated.

The WaPo’s tweet:

And the BBC (which denies that it changed its story):

On June 1, the BBC issued a breaking update claiming that “Israeli tanks” opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians at an aid site, killing 26. The allegation was presented without confirmation, based solely on anonymous sources: “residents and medics” and a “local Palestinian journalist.” The details, according to the BBC’s own Middle East Editor Sebastian Usher, included bodies carted away by donkey, and “thousands” of civilians gathered near the U.S.-backed aid center in Rafah.

The story appeared as a major headline update to an already misleading and sympathetic headline about Hamas’ ceasefire rejection: “Hamas pledges to free 10 living hostages but seeks permanent ceasefire in response to US plan.”

That headline stayed live for much of the day. The claim of 26 dead later became 31, courtesy of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. And despite a firm denial from the GHF — stating unequivocally that reports of deaths and injuries were “false and fabricated” and warning that the lies were being “actively fomented by Hamas” — the BBC did not retract the story.

The headline:

The IDF denies firing at any civilians, and the retractions of two organizations that it did, along with the assurance of the Gaza Humanitarian foundation above, makes it nearly certain that the claims of Israel attacking Gazan civilians trying to get humanitarian aid was false. (And ask yourself: what would be the IDF’s interest in doing that?)  Here’s the IDF’s tweet:

But it’s too late: the world has laid another blood libel at the doorstep of Israel. Media like the WaPo and BBC will believe any lie from Hamas that demonizes Israel. It’s infuriating.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  Hili and Szaron want to rest:

Hili: He wants to make the bed.
Szaron: Tell him that we are still asleep.
In Polish:
Hili: On chce posłać łóżko.
Szaron: Powiedz mu, że jeszcze śpimy.

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

From Jesus of the Day via Adam Ziemann at Art is Art. Jesus is recharging at night:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Meow, mother and children (again, I hope this is real!):

Masih’s still recuperating, I guess, but here’s JKR responding to a nasty person. She loves to do this stuff.

From Luana; a performative gesture by Greta:

From Malcolm, Green peace:

Two from my feed:

Nautilus from @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 390 #visioningcoralsea #MarineLife

— Lisa (@tuexplorer1.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T03:05:57.375Z

Natasha fights for the truth on the Piers Morgan show.

One from the Auschwitz Memorial that I reposted:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was nine.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-05T09:46:53.348Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. The first one is wonderful: flying foxes everywhere!

Just reached Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and was greeted by thousands of fruit bats flying over the city.

— Kory Evans Ph.D (@sternarchella.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T05:03:23.731Z

This bird got two free rides to a restaurant:

A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius.This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

— Paige Byerly, PhD (@paigebyerly.bsky.social) 2025-06-03T08:24:31.625Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 4, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“ថ្ងៃ Hump” in Khmer), Wednesday, June 4, 2025, and National Cheese Day. Here’s a long video about how my very favorite cheese (Comté, preferably aged over two years) is made. The meal shown at the end is fantastic.

It’s also Global Running Day, Hug Your Cat Day (don’t forget to kiss the belly!), and National Cognac Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*The negotiations between the U.S. and Iran about de-nuking the latter country appear to have reached an impasse.  According to the Jerusalem Post, Iran is now making preparations for attacks by Israel and the U.S.

Iran is strengthening its air defense systems amid preparations for the possibility of an American or Israeli attack on the country’s nuclear infrastructure should nuclear negotiations fail, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

“We are witnessing an impressive improvement in the capabilities and competence of the country’s air defense system,” Iran’s Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Baqeri reportedly said in May, adding that Iran’s military has seen a “multi-fold increase in investments.”

“The enemies of the Iranian nation should understand that any violation of our airspace will cause them significant harm,” he added.

According to Western intelligence assessments and security analysts’ investigation of satellite imagery, Iran appears to have relocated several anti-aircraft missile launchers to positions close to key nuclear sites like Natanz and Fordow, the report says.

A significant portion of Iran’s most advanced anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems – including its long-range Russian S-300 systems – were destroyed or damaged during Israeli air strikes on the country in October and April 2024, the FT states.

. . .”Israel currently has almost complete air superiority over Iran,” Robert Tolast, a researcher at the British RUSI Institute, told the FT. “But such an attack would require waves upon waves of aircraft for hours. Crew fatigue comes into play – the longer they are over Iran, the greater the chance that something will go wrong.”

“From the Iranian side, this effort is trying to recreate the success story of Iran’s ballistic missile development program,” Fabian Hintz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain, said to the FT.

Dealing with this defense system would not be easy for Israel, John Alterman, chairman of the Global Security and Geopolitical Strategy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told the FT. “But is it beyond Israel’s capabilities? No, of course not. The Israelis have been training for exactly this scenario for decades.”

Talks between Washington and Tehran over the future of Iran’s nuclear program are ongoing. Most recently, the US presented a proposal for a new nuclear deal to Iran on Saturday via Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who was on a short visit to Tehran and has been mediating nuclear talks between Iran and the US.

However, a senior diplomat close to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team said on Monday that Iran is poised to reject the proposal, slamming it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests and leaves Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment unchanged.

Of course Iran wants tacit approval to enrich uranium, but it will do it even if it agrees otherwise.  I somewhat welcome this impasse, as it gives Israel, which has “been training for exactly this scenario for decades.”  It there is indeed a breakdown of these talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, I don’t think Trump would stand in the way of an Israeli attack, and might even give help. But even more than that I wish the oppressed people of Iran would rise up against the theocratic regime, for the country has great potential for development.

*The WaPo reports on the Egyptian “flame-thrower” terrorist, who apparently planned his attack on supporters of Israel—actually, people peacefully reminding us of the hostages still in captivity—for a year.

The man accused of using a flamethrower to attack a demonstration voicing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza told investigators he planned the assault for a year and wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” according to court documents released Monday.

Twelve people were injured in Sunday’s attack, which sent another ripple of unease through the American Jewish community.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, who has been charged with a federal hate crime and state charges of attempted murder, appeared in court on Monday afternoon in an orange jumpsuit and with a bandage around his head. Authorities said Soliman had more than a dozen unused molotov cocktails and are investigating the incident as an act of terrorism.

The horror of the attack — many of the victims, including a Holocaust survivor, were senior citizens — was magnified by repeated violent incidents targeting American Jews since 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, setting off Israel’s current war in Gaza.

A young couple were gunned down last month as they exited a Jewish museum in D.C. and the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was set on fire in April by a man blaming him for Middle East violence against Palestinians.

Although incidents of antisemitism have been rising in the United States since 2016, groups that monitor hate crimes say the numbers have exploded since Oct. 7, 2023.

The high-profile nature of attacks over the past few weeks and the intense political debate about the causes of the war in Gaza has left some U.S. Jews feeling more vulnerable.

“It’s definitely not the same. Every Jew in America is feeling this and thinking about it differently. Many of us lived open, engaged active Jewish lives and never felt antisemitism as a threat in any meaningful way and I don’t know anyone who thinks that now,” said Hadar Susskind, president of the progressive advocacy group New Jewish Narrative.

Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” as he used a flamethrower and tossed an incendiary device into the crowd at a Colorado pedestrian mall, where the local chapter of a pro-Israeli group, Run for Their Lives, was hosting an event calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, law enforcement officials have said. Soliman learned about the group from an online search and specifically targeted them, according to court documents.

I am a secular Jew, which of course doesn’t save me from this kind of stuff, as I’m still typed as a “Zio” and I do sympathize with Israel. Still, never in my life did I think I’d see the kind of Jew hatred spreading across the West that I see now. Practically no Western country is not replete with antisemitism, and there’s attack after attack. Does anybody even notice that Jews themselves don’t engage in the kind of terrorism and illegal demonstrations that we regularly see from Palestinians?  Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Nothing that Jews or Israel do could ever be met with approbation.

*The Free Press document’s the UK’s abysmal freedom of expression in an article called “The British mother serving time for a tweet.” An excerpt:

Lucy Connolly is Britain’s foremost political prisoner. Connolly, a 41-year-old childminder and the mother of a 12-year-old daughter, is currently serving a 31-month sentence for “stirring up racial hatred” in a single tweet that she deleted less than four hours after posting. On May 20, a court rejected Connolly’s application to appeal.

Connolly’s case is the latest in a series revealing the decline of free speech in Britain and the rise of a “two-tier” justice system that treats ordinary people like enemies of the state.

Before we get into the legal technicalities, let’s review what happened:

On July 29, 2024, Axel Rudakubana, the 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants to Britain, went on a stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift–themed children’s party in Southport, northern England. Rudakubana murdered three girls—ages 6, 7, and 9— and critically wounded six children and two adults.

Inaccurate claims on social media said the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker. In response, the police described the man they had arrested as having been born in Cardiff, Wales. Locals, however, knew something of his background, and that fed the online rumor mill.

Rudakubana was not identified until he appeared in court on August 1, 2024. He was charged with murder, attempted murder, and knife possession (and later with possession of homemade ricin and an al-Qaeda manual). By then, protests and rioting had erupted in Southport, where a crowd attacked police officers and the local mosque.

The rioting spread across England and Northern Ireland—the worst outbreak of disorder in Britain in more than a decade. It devastated the official image of Britain as a multicultural, multiracial success story, forced open a long-suppressed debate on immigration and crime—and, through the Lucy Connolly case, raised serious questions about whether or not the police and justice systemtreat crimes differently depending on the identity of the perpetrator.

Connolly, who suffers from PTSD after losing her 19-month-old son to failures in medical care in 2011, issued her tweet before the rioting began. At 8:30 p.m. on the day of the killings, enraged by what she had read and seen online, she tweeted:

And here’s the tweet from itvX (you can fill in the “f” word and “b” word for yourself.

There is little doubt that Connolly’s statement broke British law. Under Section 19 of the Public Order Act (1986), anyone who “publishes or distributes written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting” is liable to prosecution and up to seven years in prison.

There is, however, growing doubt that Connolly’s punishment fit her crime. Plenty of more serious offenders escape prison terms. In 2023, the year before Connolly’s tweet, the UK government’s National Crime Agency found that eight in 10 of those convicted of possessing child abuse pornography in Britain avoided prison.

First of all, this would not be a violation of free speech in America. Even though it’s a call for violence, it’s not likely to incite “imminent and predictable lawless action,” the criterion for violating the First Amendment. Rather, these are the lucubrations of a disturbed mother overreacting to the murder of three young girls. Is it hateful? Of course! I would never publish such a thing. Is it racist? Well, yes, in that she demonizes a whole group. Should she serve 2½ years in jail for it? No, not one day, especially when she has PTSD, had lost a child, deleted the tweet within four hours, and because 80% of those convicted of child pornography do no jail time.  In fact, she’d serve no jail time in the U.S.  And I’d say the same thing if she were talking about Jews instead of (presumably) African immigrants or blacks.  You know what the UK needs? A First Amendment.

*Wire Sports leaked what appears to be the first page of the chromosome test of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who woman a gold medal in women’s welterweight category in last year’s summer Olympics. Observers noted that Khelif had an extraordinarily powerful punch on top of what looked like a male phenotype, though Khelif claimed vociferously the sex of a biological women.  Wikipedia says this, which probably needs correction if the document below is true:

Unsubstantiated claims that Khelif is male were fueled by Khelif’s disqualification from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, organised by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) after she allegedly failed unspecified gender eligibility tests.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its Paris Boxing Unit stated Khelif was eligible to compete in the Olympics and criticized the IBA’s previous disqualification as “sudden and arbitrary” and taken “without any due process”. Khelif was born female,and no medical evidence that she has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone has been published.

I’ve put a box around the relevant part, which apparently shows that Khelif has XY chromosomes.  Khelif was raised as a woman, probably because he had ambiguous or female-like genitalia and thus a disorder (also called “difference”) of sex determination, as evidenced by physiognamy and performance. Because Khelif was raised as a woman, his/her claims probably don’t involve duplicity, but simple misidentification of biological sex.  Based on the test below, though, Khelif should have been investigated further by the Olympics (the box around the chromosome result is mine).

Wire Sports adds this:

Since winning gold, Khelif has been on a publicity tear that clearly aims to spotlight a female identity – appearing at a Bottega Veneta fashion show (“mustard button-up shacket with black leather trousers”), posing for the cover feature in one of Vogue magazine’s editions and more. In January, a Qatari public relations agency, Kotinos, announced Khelif had joined up; a few days ago, anticipating a first-since-Paris appearance at a boxing tourney next week in Holland, the Kotinos Instagram account posted, again, about Khelif.

In Paris, Khelif said, “I am a woman, like any other woman. I was born a woman. I have lived as a woman. I compete as a woman. There is no doubt about that,” adding, “There are enemies of success — that is what I call them.”

Since Paris, Khelif has not – at least for the public record – taken a chromosome test.

World Boxing has since banned Khelif from competition until the athlete takes another sex test. This will probably involve a cheek swab, which is highly accurate (though not 100% perfect) in detecting the SRY gene, whose sequence is nearly perfectly correlated with the type of reproductive system indicating male or female sex.  The story adds this, which I can’t verify:

Last October, in an account that built on what I wrote from Paris, a French outlet, citing a June 2023 medical report, reported that Khelif has a difference in sexual development – formally called 5-alpha reductase type-2 deficiency – with XY chromosomes, internal testes and a “micropenis.”

A hormone test showed a “male-type testosterone level of 14.7,” the French story said, “while the female gender does not exceed the maximum level of 3.”

Here’s the 46-second bout between Khelif and Italy’s Angela Carini that raised all the questions.  Carini withdrew, saying that she had never felt a punch that hard:

*If you’re in Amsterdam, you may want to go to the Rijksmuseum, even if you’ve been, for there’s an unusual new item to see:

The Netherlands’ national museum has a new object on display that merges art with Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District: a nearly 200-year-old condom, emblazoned with erotic art.

The Rijksmuseum said in a statement that the playful prophylactic, believed to be made around 1830 from a sheep’s appendix, “depicts both the playful and the serious side of sexual health.”

It is part of an exhibition called “Safe Sex?” about 19th century sex work that opened on Tuesday.

The condom, possibly a souvenir from a brothel, is decorated with an erotic image of a nun and three clergymen.

The phrase “This is my choice” is written along the sheath in French. According to the museum, this is a reference to the Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting “The Judgment of Paris,” which depicts the Trojan prince Paris judging a beauty contest between three goddesses.

The condom is on display until the end of November.

You can see it easily at this CNN site, and, lo and behold, it’s made of a sheep’s appendix. I have wondered how they prevented pregnancy in the old days.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is scatterbrained:

Hili: There are some things we have to discuss.
A: What things?
Hili: I’m just trying to remember them.
In Polish:
Hili: Jest kilka spraw, które musimy przedyskutować.
Ja: Jakie?
Hili: Właśnie próbuję sobie przypomnieć.
And a picture of Szaron.

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From Merilee, a semi-salacious post from The Rogue Chef II (it looks more like a goose):

From Jesus of the Day:

From Cravomgs:

Masih is still quiet (perhaps she’s still recuperating from surgery), so here’s JKR commenting on the Khelif boxing kerfuffle (see above):

From Luana. Brianna Wu, a trans woman, was the person who was most supportive of my stand when I went on the Piers Morgan show to talk about the KeFFRFle (go to the video and see her at 31:10). I like her:

From Barry. My answer is, “Yes: all the time.”

Do you ever just feel

— ugh weevil ✨ (@ugh-imhere.bsky.social) 2025-06-02T18:08:54.000Z

From Simon, who says he’s glad “the expert class is in charge”:

(Reuters) – FEMA staff left baffled after the disaster agency’s head said during a briefing that he hadn’t been aware the US has a hurricane season. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fema-staff-confused-after-head-said-he-was-unaware-us-hurricane-season-sources-2025-06-02/

— Steve Herman (@w7voa.journa.host.ap.brid.gy) 2025-06-02T21:04:05.000Z

From Malcolm: a military cat giving a snappy salute:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Belgian Jewish boy was gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was one year old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T09:11:58.866Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb, who, after getting better, is down with yet another microbe. The first post he calls “Spiderhenge”:

A 12-shot stack of the curious silkhenge spider egg sac (more info here: http://www.rainforestexpeditions.com/we-solved-an…). This is currently being studied by brilliant arachnologists, including the amazing @henriquesbio.bsky.social. It's still not clear what type of spider builds this structure.

— Marc A. Milne (@forthespiders.bsky.social) 2025-06-02T20:52:46.001Z

And a velvet worm (an onycophoran):

!. Look at this astonishing animal. My velvet worm friend lives on moss in the rainforest. He is ANCIENT. WAY older than dinosaurs, lobopods like him even make an appearance in the Cambrian- when multicellular life became trendy.You can find him today on a tree at Wildsumaco, in Ecuador 🙂

— Nathan Harness (@nathanharness.bsky.social) 2025-06-02T12:50:42.743Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

June 2, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first full “work” week of June: it’s Monday, June 2, 2025, and National Rotisserie Chicken Day. The best deal, of course, is at Costco, where you get a four-pound bird for five bucks!:

It’s also I Love My Dentist Day (xoxo to Dr. Baer), National Rocky Road Day, and the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

This just in: eight people were torched in an attack while supporting the Israeli hostages still in Gaza. In a demonstration on Boulder, Colorado, an apparently pro-Palestinian suspect firebombed the demonstrators and used a makeshift flamethrower to burn them. Eight people were injured, Another day, another attack on Jews. More on this in tomorrow’s Nooz.

*Here’s a morally fraught question: “Do patients without a terminal illness have the right to die?”  (archived here).  The intro to the story involves Paula Ritchie, a 52-year-old Canadian woman in intractable and untreatable pain after a concussion two years ago.  Canada has recently passed a Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program intended for people like her.

The pain was worse than anything she had ever felt, and Paula had always been in pain. Over the years, she had collected varied and sometimes competing diagnoses: fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, chronic migraine. Also bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, substance-use disorder (marijuana). Paula told a friend that a veterinarian would put a dog down for feeling better than she did.

In the months after the concussion, she took Percocet, for joint pain, and Lyrica, for nerve pain, and Ativan, for anxiety. She took pills for vertigo and insomnia, and she tried a drug called Lamotrigine: an anti-epileptic that is also used as a mood stabilizer. When that didn’t work, she spent money that she didn’t really have on chiropractors and acupuncturists and reiki energy healers. Everything just made her dizzier, and nothing touched the pain.

She tried to suffocate herself using plastic bags, but failed.

Some of the coverage was about a recent expansion to the legislation. While MAID was initially restricted to patients with terminal conditions, the law in Canada was amended, in 2021, to include people who were suffering but who weren’t actually dying: people like Paula, who might have years or decades of life ahead of them.

Wonnacott [a doctor who is Paula’s MAID assessor] already believed that Paula met most of the criteria for MAID, on the basis of her neurological disorder and lingering symptoms. Still, he wondered if there was anything he could do to make her life better, or at least good enough that she wouldn’t want to die. In particular, Wonnacott wanted to know if Paula would consider seeing a neuropsychiatrist, a specialist who worked at the intersection of chronic pain and brain injury.

“I cannot get through a day,” Paula said. “It’s physical torture.” She wanted to know at what point she was allowed to refuse more treatment.

Why the bill was amended to include people like Paula:

The early paradigmatic cases were people in their 70s and 80s with terminal cancer: educated, affluent men and women who didn’t want to die slowly, perhaps in pain, perhaps slipping in and out of consciousness for hours or days. In one poll, an overwhelming 86 percent of Canadians were found to support MAID’s legalization.

But clinicians who agreed to assess dying patients were visited by other kinds of patients too: people with chronic pain or spinal-cord injuries or slow-moving, early-stage neurological disorders, like Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis — people who were suffering terribly but who weren’t dying of their conditions in any immediate way. MAID assessors would have to tell these patients that they didn’t qualify.

At the same time, Canadian newspapers were publishing stories about people who were denied MAID and then went on to take their own lives, alone or fearful. One was Cecilia Bernadette Chmura, a 59-year-old with chronic pain who killed herself with a handful of hoarded pills, crushed in a coffee grinder, and whose husband was taken into custody after her death. Her husband had insisted that his wife die in her own bed, in his arms, instead of alone in a motel room, as she initially suggested to protect him from prosecution. (He was not charged.)

Paula qualified, and a doctor gave her a lethal injection. It’s a heartbreaking story, but the legislation is good.

She imagined that when Wonnacott reached for the syringe, she would flinch. But Paula was calm and still as the drugs went in. “I don’t feel anything,” she whispered.

“You will.”

“Oh, wow,” she said. “This is horrible. I’m just so sorry.” Paula coughed as if she might vomit. Deep, guttural hacks. After a few moments, her body relaxed. A wet tissue fell from her hands. Her skin slowly turned a pale white.

Wonnacott pressed his stethoscope to Paula’s chest. “It’s over.”

I agree that, with the assent of doctors and psychiatrists, people should have the right to get assisted suicide if they just can’t bear living any more, and if they’ve tried all available remedies. But the article details many people who disagree with this—some of them religious.   Some ministers whom Paula asked to sit with her while she died simply refused. How callous!  In the future, when people realize that MAID for such people is the merciful thing to do, this will become widespread.

*The WaPo reports how Trump is starting to dismantle cases of discrimination based on characteristics like race, and sex:

For decades, the federal government has used data analysis to ferret out race and sex discrimination, winning court cases and reaching settlements in housing, education, policing and across American life. Now the Trump administration is working to unwind those same cases.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department backed out of an agreement with an Atlanta bank accused of systematically discouraging Black and Latino home buyers from applying for loans. The Education Department terminated an agreement with a South Dakota school district where Native American students were disciplined at higher rates than their White peers. And federal prosecutors have dropped several racial discrimination reform agreements involving state and local police departments — including that of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by an officer in 2020.

The Justice Department now is reviewing its entire docket and has already dismissed or terminated “many” cases that were “legally unsupportable” and a product of “weaponization” under the Biden administration, said Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“We will fully enforce civil rights laws in a way that satisfies the ends of justice, not politicization,” she said in a statement to The Washington Post.

The review includes cases and reform agreements forged after years-long investigations that the administration says lacked justification. Civil rights experts estimate that dozens of discrimination cases involving banks, landlords, private employers and school districts could face similar action.

“What we’re seeing is an attempt by the Trump administration to really dismantle a lot of the core tools that we use to ensure equality in the country,” said Amalea Smirniotopoulos, senior policy counsel and co-manager of the Equal Protection Initiative at the Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit that has long advocated for the civil rights of Black Americans and other minorities.

. . .At the center of this effort is “disparate impact analysis,” which holds that neutral policies can have discriminatory outcomes even if there was no intent to discriminate. The legal standard stems from Griggs v. Duke Power, the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision that became a staple of civil rights litigation. In that case, attorneys relied on statistical evidence to show how standardized testing prevented Black employees in North Carolina from advancing at the energy company.

The legal theory has been consistently recognized by the Supreme Court, written into federal regulations and enshrined into employment law by Congress. But President Donald Trump declared it unconstitutional in April, issuing an executive order that kicked off an intense review of civil rights regulations, enforcement actions and settled cases.

At first the Griggs decision would seem insupportable given that colleges are allowed to discriminate against applicants if their test scores are too low.  Isn’t that a neutral policy that leads to a discriminatory outcome? And, in fact, the Griggs case did involve a test. However, I can see its point if the “neutral” measure really has nothing to do with the qualifications for actually doing a job.  Still, I’m a bit confused why the Court urges colleges to use neutral (race free) measures to discriminate, but prevents it in the private sector.

*The Wall Street Journal notes that Harvard has become a training school for Chinese Communists.

U.S. schools—and one prestigious institution in particular—have long offered up-and-coming Chinese officials a place to study governance, a practice that the Trump administration could end with a new effort to keep out what it says are Chinese students with Communist Party ties.

For decades, the party has sent thousands of mid-career and senior bureaucrats to pursue executive training and postgraduate studies on U.S. campuses, with Harvard University a coveted destination described by some in China as the top “party school” outside the country.

Alumni of such programs include a former vice president and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top negotiator in trade talks with the first Trump administration.

In an effort announced Wednesday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. authorities will tighten criteria for visa applications from China and “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The statement didn’t say how the Trump administration would assess Communist Party ties or what degree of connection would result in revocation of visas. In China, party membership is widely seen as helpful for career advancement—in government and the private sector—and is typically a prerequisite for officials seeking high office.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday that the U.S. move “seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students.”

Again I’m in a quandary here. I have no beef with us training Chinese students, and I know how hard it is to identify them as members of the Communist Party. On the other hand, Chinese Communists are basically our enemy. On the third hand, even members of the Party might stay in the U.S., benefitting us, or benefit China in ways that could still benefit us. Readers can (and should) weigh in here.

*As I reported before, Iran has (duh!) continued to secretly enrich uranium to build a bomb, all the while duping morons (e.g., Biden, Trump, and basically all the world) into agreeing that the enriched uranium was for “peaceful purposes.” Now we know the real reason: they’re making bombs!

Iran has continued to produce highly enriched uranium at a pace of roughly one nuclear weapon’s worth a month over the past three months despite talks between Washington and Tehran on a new nuclear deal, the United Nations atomic agency said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report circulated to member states that Iran had grown its stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium to 408.6 kilograms from 274.8 kilograms in early February, an increase of around 50%. The Wall Street Journal viewed a copy of the report.

That means Iran has enough highly enriched uranium for roughly 10 nuclear weapons, based on IAEA measures of the minimum fissile material required, up from at least six at the time of the last report.

U.S. officials say it could take Iran less than two weeks to convert this highly enriched uranium into enough weapons-grade 90% fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

Iran says its nuclear work is purely peaceful. The U.S. says that Tehran hasn’t decided to build a nuclear bomb but that it would need only a few months to assemble one.

Yet even now Trump is still bargaining with Iran to cease its bomb-making activities, and says that we’re “close to a deal.”

US President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his belief that Washington was “fairly close” to reaching a nuclear deal with Iran.

“I think we have a chance of making a deal with Iran,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“They don’t want to be blown up. They would rather make a deal, and I think that could happen in the not-too-distant future,” he continued, adding that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

That’s a laugh!  He’s been bamboozled just like every other recent administration.  We should stop bargaining and collaborate with Israel to bomb their nuclear facilities, or at least give them a credible thread and a final warning.  If there’s no deal, Iran becomes a nuclear state and Israel is doomed.

*And from the reliable AP “oddities section,” we learn that Brazilians have a craze for lifelike “reborn” dolls. It’s insane!

Videos featuring emotional moments with hyper-realistic baby dolls have sparked both online fascination and political debate in Brazil, with lawmakers even bringing the lifelike dolls into legislatures.

Influencers have staged situations such as birth simulations and strolls in shopping malls with the hand-crafted baby figures, known as “reborn” dolls, creating videos that have gone viral.

In Rio de Janeiro, the city council has passed a bill honoring those who make the lifelike dolls, pending Mayor Eduardo Paes’ signature. Meanwhile, legislators elsewhere across the country have debated fines for those seeking medical help for such dolls, following a video allegedly showing a woman taking one to a hospital.

Here’s a video about them. Oy! These are the updated, AI version of Cabbage Patch dolls:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is doing entomology:

Andrzej: What are you looking at so intently?
Hili: Some little thing is climbing to the top of a blade of grass.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Mały wspina się na sam szczyt źdźbła trawy.
And a picture of both Szaron and Baby Kulka:

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

From CinEmma:

From Things With Faces: a ghoulish brew:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy. I think they mean “Angus.”

Masis is still quiet. Here’s something Martina Navratilova tweeted; more women cheated out of medals:

From Malcolm. Look at those reaction times!

From Luana:

Two from my feed.  This is an intriguing one:

A Narnia entrance:

One I inserted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First: AI videos:

AI reality: if it’s online we can’t believe our eyes or our earsThis isn’t the future, this is now thanks to Gemini / Google’s Veo 3

— Katherine T. Tyson (@katherinettyson.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T12:48:36.228Z

Matthew says, “Look at the wings.”  Yep, they’re homologous to our hands.

Fliegender Flughund #travelphotography#indonesia flying fox #NaturePhotography

— Mathias 🕊️🦋 (@swaninga.bsky.social) 2025-05-26T17:20:13.544Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 1, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, the sabbath for goyische cats, and we’re now  into June. It’s June 1, 2025.  Here is the June illustration from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (ca. 1412-1416).  It’s time to reap!

Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Hazelnut Cake Day, Wear a Dress Day (I address this to Luana, who refuses to wear dresses), World Milk Day, Dinosaur Day, Heimlich Maneuver Day, National Frozen Yogurt Day, and National Olive Day.

Refresh yourself with this video about the Heimlich Maneuver, and don’t forget the back pounding:

There’s a Google Doodle today, celebrating “hyperpop” music, which, says the site, is “a genre/anti-genre of electronic music pioneered by LGBTQ+ artists.” Click below if you want to see where it goes (it’s Pride Month):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*More tariffs in store: Trump is planning to double the tariff on foreign steel and aluminum. Just another stupid move in the endless tariff wars. The news last night (sans Lester Holt, my fave, who left) announced the European countries already pay less for these metals than we do. We’re only going to fall farther behind.

President Trump said on Friday that he would double the tariffs he had levied on foreign steel and aluminum to 50 percent, a move that he claimed would further protect the industry.

The announcement came as Mr. Trump traveled to a U.S. Steel factory outside Pittsburgh to hail a “planned partnership” that he helped broker between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel, a corporate merger that he opposed last year as a presidential candidate. Although the details of the U.S. Steel deal are still murky — and Mr. Trump later admitted he had not yet seen or signed off on it — the president used the moment to cast himself as a champion of the embattled industry.

Speaking to a crowd of steel workers, Mr. Trump claimed that foreign countries had been able to circumvent the 25 percent tariff he put in place this year. The higher tariffs would “even further secure the steel industry in the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

It is not clear how much doubling the tariff rate would actually bolster the domestic steel sector, but the move gave Mr. Trump the opportunity to wield tariffs at a time when his other import taxes have proved vulnerable to legal challenges.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said that the tariffs would take effect on June 4 and that they would provide a “big jolt” to American steel and aluminum workers.

A big, big, BIGLY jolt. In fact, the highest jolt in the history of the WORLD!  But while it may boost American metal production, we all know that it will also boost the prices of goods made with steel and aluminum, and the net effect on the American economy would be negative.  I could have written about many other maladaptive things our “President” is doing, including issuing pardons to bad people (see below), trying to block or rescind visas for foreign students, cutting grants, and so on.  But I don’t want to turn this site into a Trump-bashing venue, for there are many other places you can go to see that.

*The Times of Israel, quoting a reliable international organization, says what anybody with brains already knows: Iran has been sneakily trying to build a bomb while hiding its activities from the rest of the world:

Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the UN nuclear watchdog at three locations that have long been under investigation, the watchdog said in a wide-ranging, confidential report to member states seen by Reuters.

The findings in the “comprehensive” International Atomic Energy Agency report requested by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors in November pave the way for a push by the United States, Britain, France and Germany for the board to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.

A resolution would infuriate Iran and could further complicate nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.

VIENNA — Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the UN nuclear watchdog at three locations that have long been under investigation, the watchdog said in a wide-ranging, confidential report to member states seen by Reuters.

The findings in the “comprehensive” International Atomic Energy Agency report requested by the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors in November pave the way for a push by the United States, Britain, France and Germany for the board to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.

A resolution would infuriate Iran and could further complicate nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.

While many of the findings relate to activities dating back decades and have been made before, the IAEA report’s conclusions were more definitive. It summarized developments in recent years and pointed more clearly towards coordinated, secret activities, some of which were relevant to producing nuclear weapons.

It also spelled out that Iran’s cooperation with IAEA continues to be “less than satisfactory” in “a number of respects.” The IAEA is still seeking explanations for uranium traces found years ago at two of four sites it has been investigating. Three hosted secret experiments, it found.

The IAEA has concluded that “these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear program carried out by Iran until the early 2000s” and that “some activities used undeclared nuclear material,” the report said.

Whatever made U.S. and world leaders think the Iran was enriching uranium for “peaceful” purposes? Blindness, stupidity, or both, I guess. This should be a wake-up call to Trump to stop trying to strike a “stop-the-nukes” deal with Iran in return for loosening sanctions.  Iran is lying, it’s always lied about this, and Trump should just go ahead and let Israel try to take out the bomb-making facilities-. In fact, the U.S. and Israel should do that jointly,

*At the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan asks us to “Pardon the Death of Liberal Democracy“, and it’s about Trump’s numerous and unjustifiable pardons:

I suppose you can say that at least Trump is not a hypocrite. Fathomlessly corrupt himself, he has been particularly assiduous in pardoning his fellow white-collar criminals.

Just in the past month, he gave a pardon to a former Connecticut governor who pled guilty to honest services fraud, mail fraud, and tax fraud; to a nursing home exec who pled guilty to tax crimes; to reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, for bank fraud, wire fraud, and tax dodging; to a former Staten Island congressman, for tax fraud; to a former Detroit mayor, for fraud and racketeering; to a labor union leader who took gifts up to $315,000 and didn’t report them; to a federal judge in Missouri, for Medicaid fraud; to a former member of the Cincinnati City Council, for bribery; and to a Nevada pol who embezzled the money raised for a statue honoring a murdered police officer and spent it on plastic surgery. Then there’s the infamous former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who tried to sell a Senate seat.

. . . . Trump can empathize, of course. His own company was convicted of tax fraud, and he tried to steal an election. There is nothing in the presidency he wouldn’t monetize — as his latest $1 million-a-plate crypto dinner and the Qatari 747 prove beyond any doubt. He and his family are now, and always have been, emphatically for sale; and he regards any other approach to life as stupid. But it’s also striking how the huge majority of his pardons have been for Trump-supporting Republicans. Even Blagojevich calls himself a Trumpocrat. Fraud is fine and pardonable — if you like and support Trump. It’s the only criterion that matters.

The foulest by far was his pardon of all the participants who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power by mob violence. This mega-pardon of more than 1,500 people, at the very beginning of his second term, was not a validation of fraud, but an actual presidential endorsement of political violence. The pardon process used to be painstaking, methodical, and careful. Trump made the J6 decision with the words: “Fuck it: Release ’em all!” His open mulling over whether to pardon the conspirators to assassinate governor Gretchen Whitmer adds a touch of specific menace.

The concept of a pardon, of course, is extremely hard for Trump to understand. Traditionally, a pardon is due to someone who has completed (or nearly completed) their sentence, expressed remorse, and turned their life around — and thereby been the recipient of mercy. But remorse is a concept unknown to a pathological narcissist. Mercy is even stranger. After all, who wins and who loses in an act of mercy? It’s one of those acts defined by grace — another literally meaningless concept for Trump. For him, all human conduct is built on a zero-sum, winner-vs-loser foundation. So a pardon is always instrumental — a way to reward allies, win credits, and enlarge his power by announcing to the world that he alone is the ultimate rule of law, and can intervene at any point to ensure his version of justice is the dispositive one. A monarch, in other words.

. . . .So of course, he is using the pardon power all the time, rather than waiting till the end of his term. It replaces the rule of law with monarchical discretion. That’s why he could not tolerate Jeff Sessions all those years ago. Because Sessions, for all his passionate partisanship, still understood the system he was operating in and still believed that the appearance of impartial justice was integral to liberal democracy’s survival. Sessions was an American.

The core reason Trump is an existential threat to liberal democracy is because he literally cannot understand this. I don’t even think he is that cynical about it. He honestly believes that people on his side can only be prosecuted out of political malice, and that people on the other side are always guilty. A judge who rules in his favor is wise; a judge who rules against him is ipso facto corrupt. And his wily capacity to wriggle free of the many impeachable offenses he committed in office, and legal accountability thereafter, has only deepened this belief.

Yes, we all know now that Trump behaves like a petulant child, lashing out at perceived enemies and rewarding his toadies. I thought it was bad to live through the Nixon era, but Trump beats all.  And if the Democrats don’t get their act together, we’ll have President Vance in 2028—and eight more years or Republican rule.

*At Richard Dawkins’s Substack, he reproduces his new foreword to George Williams’s classic book on evolution, Adaptation and Natural Selection. Richard’s intro is called “Foxes in the snow.”

On opening it I have the feeling of being ushered into the presence of a penetrating and outstanding mind, the same feeling I get, indeed, from reading The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, although Williams, unlike Fisher, was no mathematician. In George Williams we have an author of immense learning and incisive critical intelligence, who thought deeply about every aspect of evolution and ecology. Williams not only enlarged the synthesis, he exposed with great clarity where many of its followers had gone astray, even in some cases the original authors themselves. ‘is is a book that every serious student of biology must read, a book that irrevocably changes the way we look at life. Throughout my career as an Oxford tutor, I obviously recommended many books to my students. But I think this was the only one I insisted that all should read. Here’s a list of major mistakes a student is likely to make before reading this book, but will not make afterwards.

You can read the mistakes for yourself, but it really is a great book, and must be one of the first books that a beginning student in evolutionary biology reads.  Here’s a bit about “spandels”: things that look like direct adaptations but are adaptive byproducts of other features installed by natural selection (“spandrels” comes from Gould and Lewontin’s 1978 paper, a mixed effort):

A ‘spandrel’ is a non-adaptive by-product. The name comes from the gaps between gothic arches which are a necessary but non-functional by-product of the functionally important arches themselves. Long before the word was introduced into biology, Williams, a leading advocate of adaptation as a proper subject for scientific study, gave an incisive critique of what would later be called spandrels. His vivid example, which regularly grabbed the attention of my Oxford students, was a fox repeatedly running along its own tracks in the snow. Its paws increasingly flattened the snow, which made each successive journey easier and faster. But it would be wrong to say the fox’s paws were adapted to flattened snow. They can’t help flattening snow. This particular beneficial effect is a by-product. Williams summed up the message pithily: adaptation is an ‘onerous concept’.

If I might paraphrase the Anglican marriage service in a way that Williams might not, any attribution of adaptation should not be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly and in the fear of Occam’s Razor. You must first assure yourself that you could, if called upon to do so, translate your adaptation theory back into the rigorous terms of neo-Darwinism. The ‘adaptation’ you postulate must not just be ‘beneficial’ in some vague, panglossian sense. You must clearly set out, and be prepared to defend, a strictly Darwinian pathway to the evolution of the alleged adaptation. The ‘benefit’ must accrue at the proper level in the hierarchy of life, which is the unit of Darwinian natural selection. And the proper level, for Williams as for me, is that of the individual genes responsible for the putative adaptation.

. . .Return for a moment to Williams’ picturesque example of the fox in the snow. I think he’d have accepted the following reservation to his ‘spandrel’ or by-product lesson. Natural selection actually could favour an adaptive broadening of fox paws for the function of flattening snow.

But only if the resulting path benefited the fox itself (and its family) alone, rather than foxes in general. It might, for example, be connected to the individual fox’s own territory. This brings me to the central core of the book, which is Williams’ critique of ‘group selection’. This is as needed today as it was in 1966, for group selectionism won’t lie down. With its magnetic allure, perhaps politically or even aesthetically motivated, group selectionism keeps coming back for more, in ways that, I can’t resist confessing, remind me of Monty Python’s Black Knight.* Williams admits that natural selection could theoretically choose among groups.

For another prescient attack on group selection, which indeed won’t lie down, see Steve Pinker’s 2012 essay at Edge.  But all beginning grad students in evolutionary biology should read Williams’ book. Seriously.

*I’m an Everest fan (I’ve trekked to the mountain, without climbing it, twice), and so was fascinated by this Wall Street Journal article about four Brits who set a record: flying from London and summiting Everest within five days.  It usually takes weeks, but they ameliorated the climb by pre-adapting by inhaling xenon gas:

. . . the four British army veterans prepared for the world’s highest peak using a new pre-acclimatization regime involving inhaling xenon gas—once used as an anesthetic but now more commonly found in rocket propellant.

Their ascent is rocking the mountaineering community and Nepali authorities, with their use of a substance banned from competitive sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency provoking the criticism this amounts to cheating.

Nepal’s mountaineering authorities are studying the climb and its implications.

On May 29, when the country marks the first recognized summit of the mountain in 1953 as Everest Day, Nepal’s prime minister lamented the use of xenon.

“Dishonesty even with Mount Everest?” he said. “If it did happen, it should be stopped.”

Well, is it more dishonest than using supplemental oxygen?  A bit more:

After hearing [Austrian mountaineer Lukas] Furtenbach speak on the radio in 2018 about his efforts to help climbers pre-acclimatize, Fries said he contacted him to propose his idea: breathe in xenon gas before a challenging climb. The gas, said Fries, appears to have neuroprotective properties and prompts the production of a hormone that triggers red blood cell production, improving the blood’s ability to carry oxygen.

Furtenbach had the four British climbers prepare for weeks at their homes in the U.K. by sleeping for a total of over 500 hours each in tents that simulate the low-oxygen conditions on Everest. That has long been part of Furtenbach’s expeditions offering a “flash” ascent of Everest in about three weeks. The men also worked out using masks that simulated thin mountain air.

Their regime included a new feature—a roughly 20-minute, one-time hit of a mix of xenon and oxygen some weeks before the men began their climb in Nepal. The formulation was developed and administered to the men in Germany by Dr. Michael Fries, head of anesthesia and intensive-care medicine at St. Vincenz Hospital in the German town of Limburg an der Lahn.

. . . . The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation said in January that scientific literature didn’t support the idea that breathing in xenon improves performance in the mountains.

Given how swiftly it can work—putting people to sleep in a minute—highly experienced medical supervision is vital, said Fries.

If I had a bucket-list dream that I know won’t be fulfilled, it would be to stand atop Everest. I’m too old now to perch on the Earth’s highest spot, but I have been at the lowest.  It’s not the same, though. . .

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Editor-in-Chief claims her rights:

Hili: Don’t even think about it.
Andrzej: About what?
Hili: About sitting in my chair.
In Polish:
Hili: Nawet o tym nie myśl.
Ja: O czym?
Hili: O siadaniu na moim fotelu.

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

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild:

World Boxing has instituted mandatory sex testing for women boxers, banning Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif, almost surely a man raised as a woman, from boxing until s(he) takes the test. From Luana:

Rowling’s comment:

From Pinkah via reader Bryan: the advice is “Kill your darlings.” He’s right, too:

A screenshot from FB. and I have to say that the headline is dumb:

From Malcolm. I’m not sure exactly how this is helping:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was twelve.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T09:44:14.455Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  The first compares the cuts in American science funding with two other political alterations of the direction of science, although they aren’t precise parallels:

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

— Peter Gleick (@petergleick.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T04:43:12.825Z

A new paper on the origin of teeth (have a look) from the lab of Chicago colleague Neil Shubin:

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team!Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05…Open Access Paper: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41…News and Views: http://www.nature.com/articles/d41…

— Neil Shubin (@neilshubin.bsky.social) 2025-05-21T15:27:13.160Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 31, 2025 • 6:45 am

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

Here are the real ones:

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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

Nicolas Halftermeyer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also World Parrot Day and National Meditation Day

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you may remember this fatuous claim of Douthat:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are five takeaways from the competition.

The nine finalists were unflappable

Sarv stole the spotlight

The competition almost ended in the eighth round

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hili: We have to make a careful plan.
A; What plan?
Hili: How to break away from work.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy to starannie zaplanować.
Ja: Co zaplanować?
Hili: Jak się oderwać od pracy.

And a photo of Szaron:

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

Frim CinEmma:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Meow:

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

From Michael: BIG CAT HUG!

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

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

From Malcolm, a pensive cat (sound up):

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 30, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last Friday of May: It’s May 30, 2025, and June begins in two days.

It’s also Mint Julep Day, celebrating a drink that’s excellent when made with good bourbon and fresh mint: here’s one served in the traditional way, in a frosted silver cup:

Cocktailmarler, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Heat Awareness Day and National Creativity Day.

Posting has been and will continue to be light as I’ve had another bad attack of insomnia, but also because there seems to be adearth of interesting news. Or maybe it’s me. Bear with me, though: I do my best. Today I have a Zoom call and a 1.5-hour podcast to do (more on that later), so don’t expect much today.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Lots of Trumpy news today:

*After a fractious tenure as head of DOGE, Elon Musk is finally leaving the Trump administration.

Elon Musk, a key adviser to President Donald Trump who oversaw the U.S. DOGE Service, said Wednesday that he is leaving the administration after leading a contentious effort to reshape the federal bureaucracy and slash government spending.

Musk wrote on his social media platform, X, that his “scheduled time” as a special government employee had come to an end.That designation, which exempts him from financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules that apply to full-time government workers, also means he is not permitted to work more than 130 days in a 365-day period.

In the post, Musk thanked Trump for the “opportunity to reduce wasteful spending” and said DOGE’s “mission will only strengthen over time.”

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed Musk’s departure and said his offboarding will begin Wednesday night.

A day earlier, in a major break with the president and Republicans, Musk said he did not approve of Trump’s spending bill — officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — with its massive tax cuts.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News.

Trump — who in February sat alongside Musk for a Fox News interview that saw the two men praise each other effusively — has yet to comment on Musk’s departure, though the president has posted unrelated memes and video on social media since Musk’s announcement.

For weeks, Musk has signaled that he plans to wind down his government work and refocus on his companies. Privately, he has grown frustrated with the challenges of achieving results within the federal government, along with the backlash he has faced — both personally and toward Tesla, his electric-vehicle company, The Washington Post has reported.

Well, all I can say is “good riddance,” but it’ll take years until America heals from the slash-and-burn cost-cutting strategies of Musk in collaboration with Trump.  Musk, the world’s richest man, can go back to blowing up rockets in his futile attempt to put people on Mars.

*Federal judges have blocked many of Trump’s new tariffs, including the steepest ones on China and other countries (article archived here).

A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, finding that federal law did not grant him “unbounded authority” to tax imports from nearly every country around the world.

The ruling, by the U.S. Court of International Trade, delivered an early yet significant setback to Mr. Trump, undercutting his primary leverage as he looks to pressure other nations into striking trade deals more beneficial to the United States.

Before Mr. Trump took office, no president had sought to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law, to impose tariffs on other nations. The law, which primarily concerns trade embargoes and sanctions, does not even mention tariffs.

But Mr. Trump adopted a novel interpretation of its powers as he announced, and then suspended, high levies on scores of countries in April. He also used the law to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico in return for what he said was their role in sending fentanyl to the United States.

On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.

Below is a graph that tracks the lawsuits against Trump, taken from The Washington Post, which adds,

President Donald Trump is facing about 250 lawsuits over his executive orders, far more than had been filed at this point during his first term. The unprecedented flood of legal action has stymied many of Trump’s priorities, but judges and appeals courts — up to the Supreme Court — have cleared some to move forward while litigation continues.

Judges have blocked — for now — his efforts to punish law firms and Harvard University, as well as to deport migrants without due process. Courts have allowed Trump to fire independent regulators while litigation continues. On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade blocked the 10 percent tariffs Trump imposed on all foreign products as well as the higher levies applied to imports from several dozen nations.

Most of the rulings are temporary. Their final outcomes will go a long way to shape what Trump is able to accomplish in his second term. Here is our rundown of some of the biggest cases.

*Speaking of China, Secretary of State Marco Rubio (those words stick in my craw) has announced that he’ll revoke the visas of many Chinese students—”aggressively”:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”

He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.

The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.

Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.

Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.

American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.

Last year 20% of student visas were granted to Chinese people, and I have to agree with both of the last two paragraphs.  Some of the most talented STEM people in America (in my experience) came from China, and those who stay vastly enrich scientific culture. This is just more Trumpian retribution against China, and retribution that works to the detriment of America. But will the person in the street care about this? I doubt it; they worry more about the price of groceries. But those will rise, too, helping Democrats. I worry a lot about the next Presidential election, but the 2026 midterms will give us a clue about national sentiment. (It won’t give us a Democratic government, though, and remember that Trump has veto power until his term is up.

*Newsweek reports a new policy of massive grade inflation in San Francisco, and you know why (h/t Williams Garcia): all must have prizes!

San Francisco’s public high schools will implement a sweeping change to their grading system this fall, replacing traditional methods with a policy that allows students to pass with scores as low as 41 percent.

The initiative, part of a broader “Grading for Equity” push, is stirring concern among educators, students and parents over academic standards and college readiness.

The context [JAC: I’ve put the gist of the new plan in bold]

Similar policies across other Bay Area districts—such as Dublin, Oakland and Pleasanton—have seen mixed results and strong community reactions. Dublin Unified attempted a pilot of equity grading in 2023, which included removing zeros for missed assignments and awarding a minimum of 50 percent for any “reasonably attempted” work.

That pilot, however, was met with outrage and resistance. Parents created petitions, formed WhatsApp groups and filled school board meetings to protest what they saw as a lowering of standards for their children. The Dublin school board eventually suspended the initiative, though individual teachers were still allowed to use the methods at their discretion.

The experiment in San Francisco comes amid — or despite — a broader rethinking of DEI initiatives after the election of Donald Trump, who ran on a platform of excising what he and many others said were “unfair” equity practices in the government and private sectors.

. . . . The new policy, set to affect more than 10,000 students across 14 high schools, significantly changes how academic performance is measured.

Homework and classroom participation will no longer influence a student’s final grade. Students will be assessed primarily on a final exam, which they can retake multiple times. Attendance and punctuality will not affect academic standing.

The plan was first revealed in the fine print of a 25-page agenda and reported by The Voice of San Francisco, a local nonprofit. The outlet reported that the district is hiring Joe Feldman, an educational consultant known for his book Grading for Equity, to train teachers this summer.

“If our grading practices don’t change, the achievement and opportunity gaps will remain for our most vulnerable students. If we are truly dedicated to equity, we have to stop avoiding the sensitive issue of grading and embrace it,” Feldman said in a 2019 blog post for the School Superintendents Association (AASA).

Feldman’s book outlines how traditional grading can reinforce socioeconomic disparities and proposes alternative strategies for more equitable assessment. According to The Voice of San Francisco, the new system will be modeled in part on the San Leandro Unified School District, where students can earn an A with a score as low as 80 percent and pass with a D at just 21 percent. Under the forthcoming San Francisco policy, a score of 41 percent will qualify as a C.

. . . . Supporters of the policy say it better reflects real student learning by de-emphasizing behavior-based penalties like late work or missed assignments. However, critics warn the policy could harm students who are already on track for college placement.

“Nowhere in college do you get 50 percent for doing nothing,” said Laurie Sargent, an eighth-grade English teacher in the Dublin Unified School District, in a 2024 Mercury News report. “Nowhere in the working world do you get 50 percent for doing nothing. If I don’t show up to work, they don’t pay me 50 percent of my salary—even if I made a reasonable attempt to get there.”

Put me on the side of Laurie Sargent.  There is only one real motivation for this heinous laxness and grade inflation: to make the poorer students, often members of minority groups, look better.  But in the end, I think it will actually hurt those students, for it weakens the meritocracy, hiding those minority students who are standouts, and takes away the incentive from every student to work (how many students will come to class if they don’t have to, and will take exams over and over again until they get a decent score.

*I signed up for emails from Colossal Biosciences, and got one yesterday with good news and bad news. The good news is that the endangered red wolf, reduced to only 14 individuals in captivity, which reduces genetic variation, is part of a Colossal plan to boost the genetic variation. Here’s what they propose.  First, Colossal cloned a “ghost wolf” (a coyote/red wolf hybrid from the wild) that had a lot of natural red wolf genome; the cloning was done using a domestic dog surrogate mother.  Later, the firm plans to insert some genuine red wolf genome (based on DNA taken from captive wolves) into the genome of ghost wolves (see the video here and discussion on the Colossal website here), making Colossal “one step closer to restoring the species”. While this may up the genetic variation in captive red wolves, it’s not clear how much red wolf genome will be boosted in the “restored species”, and I don’t know how serious a problem the lack of genetic variation poses anyway (habitat loss and hunting may be far more serious problems). So we may get more red-wolfish individuals (where will they be released?), but as far as I can see, they won’t be genetically pure red wolves.  We’ll have to wait and see. The project has its good aspects, but, as usual, I think there’s some hype here.

The bad news is that Colossal is STILL referring to the dire wolf as a “de-extincted” ancient animal, despite having admitted previously that they did not bring back dire wolves and in fact produced only grey wolves with 15 DNA edits derived from the dire wolf genome out of 20 total edits.  So Colossal has backtracked bit time.

Here’s a screenshot from the email, followed by a breathless video praising the bogus “de-extinction”.

Here’s a rah-rah video, heavy on the PR and devoid of any caveats.

Clearly, Colossal has decided to dig in its heels and argue that, yes, they have “de-extincted” the dire wolf. They most certainly have not. But the mainstream media has let the public down by buying into Colossal’s hype.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gets a rebuke from Hili:

Hili: You made a very bad decision with this gravel.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: You forgot that cats walk without shoes.
In Polish:
Hili: Z tymi kamykami to bardzo źle wymyśliłeś.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Zapomniałeś, że koty nie chodzą w butach.

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

From Meow:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih: Iran’s built its own version of Hell to scare the bejeezus out of its citizens:

From Luana: Brown has just adopted institutional neutrality, as laid out in Chicago’s Kalven Report. It’s only the 32nd university or college to make this sensible move:

From Malcolm; Person adopts wolf pup (not knowing what it was), person bonds with wolf pup, person releases grown wolf to its pack, but wolf sometimes visits. . .

Two from my feed.  Propaganda at Harvard graduation. Sure, it’s free speech, but it’s misleading and inappropriate free speech.

Should I try this for my insomnia?

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

An eight-year old Jewish girl was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T09:33:45.065Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  He finds this first one lovely:

Something a bit different for today's #foxoftheday . Watch some newts , accompanied by a drinking fox's tongue , shared by @urbanponds101 ! Top work !

— Chris Packham (@chrisgpackham.bsky.social) 2025-05-28T07:02:58.870Z

Matthew posted this Existential Comics strip, calling it “metaphysics in the morning.” He says that Spinoza comes closest, which is true, but Spinoza, as a pantheist, thought not that God was part of the physical world, but was one with the physical world:

From the incomparable @existentialcomics.com. Spinoza comes closest, obvs. static.existentialcomics.com/comics/Early…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T07:08:29.352Z