After getting hammered by scientists for implying that their company was going to bring back extinct species, Colossal Biosciences has constantly been tinkering with its concept of what “de-extinction” really means.

First they touted that they were bringing back extinct species. Then, after some criticism, they admitted that they were not really resurrecting extinct species, but merely making genetic changes in existing species so they’d resemble extinct ones (e.g., the “dire wolf”, the moa, and the mammoth).  But then Colossal’s Chief Scientific Officer Beth Shapiro apparently realized that that wasn’t going to excite the public (and potential investors), so she simply said that, in the company’s view, a species that resembled an extinct species to an unspecified degree could be considered that extinct species.  In other words, she was adopting a relaxed view of the “morphological species concept.” To anyone with more than a handful of neurons, though, that won’t fly, as 15 genetic dire-wolfish tweaks in a coyote genome does not a dire wolf make.

Remember that Colossal predicted that they would have woolly mammoths on the ground by 2028 (they have changed that to 2030), and now, despite the absence of relatives and surrogates who could nurture or gestate tweaked species, they are saying they’re also going to “de-exinct” the flightless moas of New Zealand as well as the thylacine, the extinct “marsupial wolf” whose last member died in 1936.  Even if they were able to change tinamous to make them look more like moas, or numbats to resemble thylacines (good luck with that!), or elephants to resemble woolly mammoths (again, much luck needed!), they would not be bringing back extinct species, but only creatures superficially similar to extinct species.

I’ve discussed the four main problems with Colossal’s program in an op-ed in the Boston Globe. In short, they are the bogus claim that extinct species are being resurrected (and the impossibility of doing so), the diversion of money from real conservation needs of real species, the ethical issues of creating animals destined to be homeless and not adapted to the wild (Colossal’s program includes restoring these animals to ecosystems), and the likelihood that these shenanigans will give science a bad name by promising scientific advances that won’t be realized.

I am not denigrating the technical advances in multiple gene-editing that will surely come from Colossal’s endeavors, but criticizing their unlikely-to-be-realized promises, encapsulated in the title of my Globe piece, “De-extinction is a colossal disappointment.”

But here I want to concentrate on the second problem: Colossal’s claim that “de-extinction” involves not just bringing back simulacrums of extinct species (yes “simulacrums” is a proper plural), but also putting them in their original habitats. Have a look at how Colossal now conceives of “de-extinction” on its ever-changing website.  There you can read this (bolding is theirs):

Yesterday’s definition: de-extinction by the book:

Wikipedia officially defines de-extinction as: “the process of generating an organism that either resembles or is an extinct species.”

While this simplistic definition of de-extinction may suffice for Wikipedia and the world, it is neither accurate nor comprehensive enough to describe our mission.

For Colossal, de-extinction is not just about making an organism that is or resembles an extinct species. It’s about merging the biodiversity of the past with the innovations of the present in an effort to create a more sustainable future.

What does that mean? They explained it by coining a new term:

functional de-extinction

The process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species by resurrecting its lost lineage of core genes; engineering natural resistances; and enhancing adaptability that will allow it to thrive in today’s environment of climate change, dwindling resources, disease and human interference.

And they go on to expand upon it:

We are developing core technologies for the preservation of all species.

We are elevating expectations for de-extinction by rebuilding species to be stronger and more resilient than their predecessors.

We are repositioning once extinct species to thrive in today’s changing climate and ecosystem.

It’s absolutely clear that the de-extincted species are supposed to be placed back in the wild (“rewilding”; see below).

But if you think about it for a nanosecond or two, you realize that if you want to produce animal simulacrums that will thrive in a natural habitat, like faux woolly mammoths restored to the tundra, you need to produce more than just superficial changes in appearance. These animals had adaptive behaviors and physiologies, the former instantiated in the animals’ brains, and the latter in their bodies. And both behavior and physiology of extinct species are, even if coded in a fossil genome that we can read, unidentifiable. So these goals, to me at least, seem unattainable:

The “core genes” shown on that page to tweak an Asian elephant into a viable “woolly mammoth” that can “thrive in today’s changing climate and ecosystem” (presumably the tundra), include those involved in only six traits:

Domed cranium (the connection of this with adaptation is nebulous; it may be there just to make elephants look more like mammoths)
Longer tusks
Smaller ears
Shaggy coat
Variable levels of body fat
Longer fur (isn’t this the same as “shaggy coat”?)

And only one of these traits, “more body fat” is a physiological trait, but the mammoth-ian gene for fat metabolism, when put into the infamous “woolly mouse”, was not shown to affect cold tolerance. And of course there are all those thousands of genes affecting behavior (maternal behavior, foraging, social behavior, mating, migrating. avoiding predators and so on) and physiology (eating and digesting the right foods, living in modern, warmer environments, etc.) that are not considered “core genes”. But changing those genes to forms possessed by extinct species is essential in allowing even simulacrums of those species to survive in the wild.   And make no mistake about it: “rewilding” is a major goal of Colossal. As that page notes:

The science of de-extinction finds peak application through the processes of reintroduction and revitalization – known as rewilding. The concept is simple: return extinct animals to their original habitats so they can begin reversing the detrimental effects of climate damage. Thus, by leveraging genetic engineering, Colossal will be able to rewild vital landscapes, ending the threat of extinction faced by many species currently in existence, having a positive net effect on carbon offset, and supporting the local economies dependent on the targeted, affected habitats.

In the case of the cold-tolerant elephant mammoth hybrid specifically, rewilding equates to the reintroduction of a large cold-tolerant mammal grazer to the tundra regions of the Earth. By stirring up the ice-locked surfaces of the landscape, stomping out thin, low-oxygen trees, and exposing healthy, carbon-trapping grasses, Mammoth populations will begin immediately restoring the tundra’s role as a climate protector and balancer of greenhouse gases.

The reversal of climate damage involves claims, for the resurrected “mammoth”, that the reintroduced elephants-in-fur-coats will mitigate global warming. This is how it’s supposed to happen (from Colossal):

Re-establishing an ecosystem filled with grasslands will help to create a cycle that prevents the thaw and release of stored greenhouse gases within the arctic permafrost. With cold-tolerant elephant mammoth hybrids grazing the grasslands and roaming comfortably during the winters, they scrape away layers of snow, so that the cold air can reach the soil. This also allows grasslands to thrive and since they’re lighter than forestry, the snow won’t melt as quickly. Making way for another benefit – a surface that reflects the Sun’s radiation.

Good luck with that! How are we going to get herds of “elephant mammoth hybrids” (here they admit they aren’t creating woolly mammoths) roaming the tundra?

Now the page claims other benefits of genetic tinkering, including the ability to bring back species that are going extinct or have gone extinct within recent years, but those endeavors have their own problems, I have no time to go into that.

Although most evolutionists consider the question of the origin of life—also called “abiogenesis”—as its own discipline separate from evolutionary biology, explaining how life came to be could still be considered on aspect of neo-Darwinism. The problem, of course, is that we don’t really understand how the first living organism came to be. And what “living” means is also disputed.  Our ignorance on this issue is profound, and although there have been various suggestions of how it got started (i.e., origination of life near “hot underwater vents” or “cold underwater vents”), the earliest organisms were surely soft-bodied, and that means we won’t recover them, even as fossils.

The earliest organisms we know of for sure—cyanobacteria (“blue-green algae”, but they’re really bacteria)—are about 3.4 billion years old, and are already complex, so life must have originated way before that.

Now creationists have always preyed on ignorance, with their method often being the claim “We don’t understand how X evolved via evolutionary processes, ergo Darwinism is wrong and creationism must be right.” But time after time, as we’ve seen in cases like the bacterial flagellum that made creationist biologist Michael Behe infamous, evolutionists have been able to find viable precursors to features or organisms once thought impossible to have evolved (here’s one for the flagellum).

But now we have what appear to be a pair of creationists, with decent academic credentials, publishing a paper in a respectable journal saying that the evolution of life was too improbable to have happened by evolution. (They don’t posit an alternative, but given their repeated reference to “miracles,” I suspect they think that God did it, but they don’t mention the “G word.”) Nor do they propose an alternative way life must have originated, which makes me think that they do believe in the only alternative: life was created. (Of course then life could have evolved by natural selection!)

The provocative title of their deeply misguided article is below, and if you click on it you can see a précis of the piece, but if you want to read the whole dire thing, email me for a pdf, since nothing else is publicly available.

The authors’ affiliations, in order:

Olen R. Brown^a,*, David A. Hullender^b

^aEmeritus of Biomedical Sciences, At the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
^bMechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, USA

Here’s the abstract:

Abstract

My copy of the pdf has tiny type, but I’ll try to extract some prose. But I’ll summarize the logic of argument, which is familiar, in four steps:

1.)  First, like Alfred Russel Wallace, they don’t like the term “natural selection” because it implies that an entity, nature, is doing some active “selecting”. So the two authors use “survival of the fittest” throughout the text. Well, that’s also wrong because what survives are genes, so a better phrase would be “Reproduction of the FITTER.” But so be it. Let’s move on:

2.) The simplest living organism we know of are species in the genus Mycoplasma, bacterial parasites. They lack cell walls and have “the smallest genomes of any organism that can be grown in pure culture.” The one they refer to (M. genitalium, a parasite of the urinary tract and genitals of humans) “has a minimal metabolism and little genomic redundancy.”  Its simplicity, lack of genes that enable it to live independently, and small genome, have convinced Brown and Hullender that this is a model for the earliest known cell. Note, however, that it’s already highly evolved, with many genes and a mechanism for replicating, transcribing, and translating its DNA.

This is a quote about M genitalium from Wikipedia; the bolding is mine:

The genome of M. genitalium strain G37^T consists in one circular DNA molecule of 580,070 base pairs. Scott N. Peterson and his team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported the first genetic map using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in 1991.  They performed an initial study of the genome using sequencing in 1993, by which they found 100,993 nucleotides and 390 protein-coding genes. Collaborating with researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR; now the J. Craig Venter Institute), which included Craig Venter, they made the complete genome sequence in 1995 using shotgun sequencing. Only 470 predicted coding regions were identified in 1995, including genes required for DNA replication, transcription and translation, DNA repair, cellular transport, and energy metabolism. It was the second complete bacterial genome ever sequenced, after Haemophilus influenzae. Later data from KEGG reports 476 protein-coding genes and 43 RNA genes, totaling 519. It is unclear where the “525” gene count for the G37^T stems from and what gene calling procedure was used.

In 2006, the team at the J. Craig Venter Institute reported that only 382 genes are essential for biological functions.  The small genome of M. genitalium made it the organism of choice in The Minimal Genome Project, a study to find the smallest set of genetic material necessary to sustain life.

There is limited divergence among clinical strains of M. genitalium. All strains retain the small genome size.

Thus this species is already an efficient replicator, and reproduces by budding off offspring with duplicated DNA.  Right now it has the minimal genome of any known organism, So, since the authors think that any evolution has to begin with an organism like M. genitalium, they do this:

3.) To calculate the probability that life originated by natural selection (or “survival of the fittest”, LOL)  they calculate the probability of an organism like M. genitalium originating “by chance”.

This is one big flaw in the authors’ logic, for M. genitalium is already highly evolved, and the first “living” organism must have been much simpler than this. In fact, we have no idea what it was, but it wasn’t M. genitalium or anything like it with a sophisticated replication system. And of course life did not originate “by chance”. That’s the “junkyard tornado” fallacy named by Fred Hoyle.

But rather than addressing replication, the authors just list ten biochemical pathways in living species of M. genitalium, each of which requires multiple enzymes and multiple coenzymes, which are “vitamins”.  Here’s their table:

They then focus on the probabilities that the pathways above, assuming “70 unique enzymes that must co-originate with required coenzymes [k = 1o]” are necessary for the “minimal living cell. If you get the probability of that happening by chance, then, the sweating authors say, you have the probability of life originating (by chance).

Their assumption, again based on observing modern biochemistry, is that a coenzyme without an enzyme present is useless, and an enzyme without a coenzyme present is also useless. They say that both have to originate together in final form, and if you require that they do so “by random processes” (not natural selection!), getting these systems occurring by chance is infinitesimally small—so small, of course, that they imply that it could not have happened:

We propose an additional problem for the theory of evolution that, specifically, impacts the evolutionists use of ‘survival of the fittest’. We call this problem the requirement for co-origination of essential life functions. Co-origination is a fundamental and absolute requirement for functions essential for life. We conclude it is the death knell for survival of the fittest.

Specifically, we address the problem caused by the fact that many enzymes require co-enzymes for function. The likelihood of the random creation (by chance) of one enzyme is highly improbable. To arrive by chance, using evolution and natural selection, at an enzyme with an essential coenzyme is extremely improbable. For all enzymes that require co-enzymes, we propose that the concept of co-origination magnifies the absurd improbability and makes it impossible (if impossible has any meaning).

I don’t really understand how they got these probabilities, which are described in earlier papers that I haven’t read, but that’s irrelevant, because a). proteins and coenzymes do not originate by chance, but by natural selection from earlier precursor states, and b). enzymes and coenzymes must have coevolved through rudimentary precursors that we don’t know of, and must have done so together. You don’t calculate independent probabilities for each factor of a pair and multiply them together, which is what the authors do.

Then the final step:

4.)  The final probabilities of course are quite small, ranging from 10 to the minus 227th power to ten to the minus 1137th power. These, of course are tiny probabilities. Ergo life could not have originated in this way. But of course they neglect both the certainty of simpler precursors and the fact that enzymes and their coenzymes evolve together.  Their conclusion is this:

Calculated probabilities for the origin of life ar absurdly improbable even when highly favorable assumptions are made. This agrees with the use of ‘absurd’ for probability statements by Eigen (Eigen) and that Wald (1954) found it necessary to use ‘miracles’ to justify his use of ‘impossible becomes possible’. The origin of life and its evolution cannot be ‘explained’ by a near-infinite sequence of minute changes given direction via selection by survival of the fittest. The death knell is the necessity for co-origination in space and in time, in one genome or perhaps two contiguous genomes (or whatever assumed the function before there was a genome) of all the structures and functions that are essential for life.

The errors are multifarious here: they assume that the minimal existing organism, a complex bacterium, must have been similar to the very first organism; they assume that enzymes and coenzymes originate by chance; and they assume that enzymes and coenzymes must evolve together into their existing forms, rather than coevolving (evolving together) from simpler forms that we don’t understand.  The biggest error is assuming that the present “minimal existing organism” must resemble the first form of life that originated.

All in all, they make the usual creationist mistake of assuming things originate by chance and don’t coevolve, and also that what we see today is similar to what was present in the first forms of life.

I’d love to ask the authors “what is your alternative hypothesis, then?”, which they surely should have mentioned in the paper. But they don’t, because this is supposedly in a reputable journal, “Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.” Sadly, the journal was played by creationists, and should be really embarrassed. If any reader wants to do a more thorough analysis of this paper, just ask and I’ll send them the pdf.

You can see the editorial board (two editors-in-chief and six editors) here.  Someone should write them and let them know what they published. and that, in science, ignorance does not equal God.

Welcome to Sunday, the Sabbath made for goyische cats. It’s August, 3, 2025, and National Grab Some Nuts Day. They mean, of course, the edible variety. They are NOT talking about this:

It’s also Friendship Day, National Watermelon Day, and Esther Day (sadly, not honoring our latest mallard hen).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 3 Wikipedia page.

Do not expect much from me today as I’m racked with insomnia, having not slept a wink last night nor more than four hours per night for several weeks. As always, I do my best.

Da Nooz:

*Surprisingly, a federal judge has okayed the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) withholding of research money from grants involving DEI, a move that was of course ordered by the Trump Administration: And it’s not just DEI-related grants, either:

The National Science Foundation can continue to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from researchers in several states until litigation aimed at restoring it plays out, a federal court ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge John Cronan in New York declined to force the NSF to restart payments immediately, while the case is still being decided, as requested by the sixteen Democrat-led states who brought the suit, including New York, Hawaii, California, Colorado and Connecticut.

In his ruling, Cronan said he would not grant the preliminary injunction in part because it may be that another court, the Court of Federal Claims, has jurisdiction over what is essentially a case about money. He also said the states failed to show that NSF’s actions were counter to the agency’s mandate.

The lawsuit filed in May alleges that the National Science Foundation’s new grant-funding priorities as well as a cap on what’s known as indirect research expenses “violate the law and jeopardize America’s longstanding global leadership in STEM.”

AD

Another district court had already blocked the the cap on indirect costs — administrative expenses that allow research to get done like paying support staff and maintaining equipment. This injunction had been requested to restore funding to the grants that were cut.

In April, the NSF announced a new set of priorities and began axing hundreds of grants for research focused on things like misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion. Researchers who lost funding also were studying artificial intelligence, post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans, STEM education for K-12 students and more.

Researchers were not given a specific explanation for why their grants were canceled, attorney Colleen Faherty, representing the state of New York, said during last month’s hearing. Instead, they received boilerplate language stating that their work “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities

NSF has long been directed by Congress to encourage underrepresented groups like women and people with disabilities to participate in STEM. According to the lawsuit, the science foundation’s funding cuts already halted efforts to train the next generation of scientists in fields like computer science, math and environmental science.’

It looks as if the NSF has been directed to focus solely on merit and not the background of the investigator, though that doesn’t explain why they’re cutting grants involving PTSD for vets and stem education for kids.  The latter two areas don’t seem to be subject to much controversy, and, of course, the administration doesn’t feel the need to explain itself. It’s even more mysterious given the lack of uniformy on how the cuts are applied:

The science foundation is still funding some projects related to expanding representation in STEM, Cronan wrote in his ruling. Per the lawsuit filed in May, for example, the University of Northern Colorado lost funding for only one of its nine programs focused on increasing participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields.

*It’s been a quiet weekend, so the rest of today’s Nooz items are for relaxation and not stress. The first is that, according to the WSJ, Kim Jong-Un has built a beach resort in North Korea. The thing is, though, that it’s limited to foreigners, and those foreigners are limited to being Russian.

At North Korea’s new beach resort, the white sand glistened against the crystal-clear waters. Ten minutes of Wi-Fi cost $1.70. Food arrived in abundance, albeit with the same three beverage choices: water, tea or beer.

The weeklong trip cost roughly $2,000. The catch? All travelers had to be Russian.

Welcome to North Korea’s Wonsan Kalma coastal complex, a megaresort built by the regime to portray the country as modern and affluent. It is opening to foreign vacationers for the first time, as part of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s drive to attract more tourism to his cash-strapped country and show his people they can experience some of the finer things in life despite international sanctions.

Anastasia Samsonova, a 33-year-old from Moscow, was looking for something offbeat for her summer vacation. Having never been to North Korea, she

But as she took her first steps on the sand, Samsonova—who, along with 12 other Russians, was part of the first group of foreign vacationers allowed to visit the resort several weeks ago—faced an unsettling sight. “The entire beach was empty,” she said. “In fact, we seemed to be the only guests in the entire resort.”

One upside: The lack of fellow travelers meant the service was excellent, said Samsonova, a human-resources specialist. When the group asked for porridge and brioche buns, staff quickly produced them. Portable music speakers were hand-delivered on the beach upon request. Patio chairs for the balcony came instantly.

“We really felt like the most important people on Earth,” said Samsonova. She went home with a souvenir statuette shaped like a nuclear warhead.

North Korea once welcomed hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists a year—mostly from China—before slamming its borders shut in January 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The country reopened to tourism in February 2024 exclusively to Russian travelers. Last year, roughly 1,500 vacationers actually went, according to a Russian official from Vladivostok, a far-eastern city that has direct flights to Pyongyang.

Starting this February, North Korea allowed certain Western tourists to visit a special economic zone near the Chinese border. But after several weeks, the tours were halted without explanation. That leaves very few nationalities able to enter North Korea. The U.S. State Department since 2017 has barred American citizens from entering the country.

All my life I’ve wanted to go to North Korea, which I consider the world’s most oppressive country. But two things have stopped me. The main one is that every tourist sees the same carefully-curated sights: a trip to the DMA from the North Side, an obligatory visit to the statues of the two previous Dear Leaders (you have to pay obeisance and buy flowers, too), and the captured U.S.S. Pueblo. You can never wander off on your own, which means you can’t see the country. Second, after what happened to Otto Warmbier, I would never feel safe there. So I’ll never go unless I happen to be in South Korea and go to the DMZ, where you’re allowed to wander into part of a conference room that’s actually in North Korea. But that’s no fun. What makes my heart break is all the North Koreans who live under horrible oppression as well as poverty and almost no medical care. And since they’re told that they’re actually living in a worker’s paradise, and are forbidden to use the Internet or access foreign media, I guess many of them believe it. It’s a horrible situation that seems to have no resolution.

*Carl Zimmer reports in the NYT about a remarkable experiment in genetic engineering. As you may know, the DNA code, which comes in triplets of bases, has 64 “codes” (4 X 4 X 4), but they code for only 20 proteins (some are also “stop codons” that terminate transcription). That means that many codes are “redundant,” with different triplets, once in messenger RNA, yielding the same amino acid in a position. We’re not sure why we have this redundancy, but Zimmer’s piece gives two explanations at the end (you can read the archived version here).  Zimmer reports that scientists decided to pare down the redundancy in the bacterium E. coli, and managed, as reported in a Science paper, to get it down to 57 codons, and yet it still worked! Now you may wonder why it wouldn’t work, but remember that there are overlapping genes in which a stretch of DNA can code for two proteins using different DNA “reading frames”, so changing a code redundant for one protein could screw up another important protein.  And to do this paring, you have to look at every DNA base in the genome, changing them so that some codons simply don’t appear, but are changed to synonymous ones. Remember that E. coli, though a bacterium, still has 4.6 million base pairs and produces 4,288 proteins.

Here’s what the study involved to produce “Syn 57,” an E. coli with just 57 codes needed to function (i.e., 7 were completely eliminated):

Over the past decade, scientists have built microbes with smaller codes that lack some of that redundancy. A new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, describes a microbe with the most streamlined genetic code yet.

Remarkably, the engineered bacteria can run on an abridged code, making it clear that a full genetic code isn’t required for life.

“Life still works,” said Wesley Robertson, a synthetic biologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and an author of the new study.

. . . . For Syn61, the researchers had altered more than 18,000 codons in E. coli’s genome. To make Syn57, they would have to alter more than 100,000. They tested these changes by making small fragments of DNA and observing how well the microbe could read them.

Some changes caused no trouble, but others caused devastating harm. Bacteria have certain genes that overlap, for instance, and changing a codon in one can accidentally wreck the sequence of the other.

The scientists had to invent a lot of repairs to undo the damage, including separating overlapping pairs of genes to create two distinct stretches of DNA.

“We definitely went through these periods where we were like, ‘Well, will this be a dead end, or can we see this through?’” Dr. Robertson recalled.

Glitch by glitch, the researchers figured out how to fix the altered DNA. On Thursday, the researchers announced that they had succeeded: They had created Syn57.

Given that tranfer RNAs are also made to match each codon, I’m not sure whether the scientists got rid of the 7 genes making the 7 unnecessary tRNAs. If not, I would expect the engineered bacterium to waste some of its metabolic energy making unneeded RNA. And indeed, the engineered bacterium was not as good as the original one, though I’m not sure why:

Well, I’m not that convinced. At any rate, Zimmer, as usual, gives a clear explanation of the whole thing, so if you’re interested, go over and read it yourself. As for why the code is redundant, I asked Matthew, who responded, “I would tend to side with Crick’s ‘frozen accident’, but there are very smart people who think there is a logic to it (but they disagree, which, like with consciousness, suggests they are wrong.)”

*Some persiflage (my brain is working slowly today). As you know, people extol the taste of Mexican Coca-Cola, which is made with cane sugar, over American Coke, sweetened with corn syrup. People will pay a big premium to get Mexican Coke (real-sugar Coke is also sold to Jews on Passover, as Ashkenazi Jews traditionally avoid corn on that day). But has anybody done a blind taste test about these claims? Well, the NYT did, using its wine critic Eric Asimov. The results are mixed.

First, the previous data:

Paul Breslin is a professor of nutrition at Rutgers University who specializes in the genetic basis of taste perception. He said that recent research in his laboratory, and others, shows that people tend to choose sugar over high-fructose corn syrup, even when the sweetness level is comparable.

“There’s a clear preference, even in blind tests,” he said

Precisely how we taste the difference is not yet fully known, according to Dr. Breslin. . . .

. . .I enlisted The New York Times’s wine critic, Eric Asimov, for a blind tasting, knowing he would bring the same vocabulary and attention he brings to wine, paying attention to things like balance, finish and structure. As in wine, the sweetness in cola should be just one of many flavor notes, balanced by notes like spice, citrus, vanilla and mint.

To nail down the question of whether cane-sweetened cola tastes better, the tasting was limited to four drinks:

1. Coca-Cola Classic, sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup

2. Mexican Coke, imported and sweetened with cane sugar

3. Pepsi, sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup

4. Pepsi-Cola Made With Real Sugar, which contains both beet sugar and cane sugar

He tasted each twice: first, chilled and straight from the can (or bottle, in the case of Mexican Coke); then, poured over pebble ice for a fountain-soda effect. Potato chips were our palate cleanser.

The results? Although both tasters preferred Mexican to corn-syrup Coke, both lost to, yes, Pepsi:

In the end, the soda that we both picked as the winner was Pepsi, made with high-fructose corn syrup. It wasn’t more “syrupy” than the sugar-sweetened sodas, and seemed to have more — and more balanced — flavors than the others.

Overall, we didn’t find that soda with sugar tastes better than — or even different from — soda sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

We did, however, manage to illustrate the well-known “Pepsi paradox,” noted since the 1970s, that although Coke is a far more popular drink, Pepsi often wins blind taste tests.

So there you go. Just drink regular Pepsi!  I had a technician in my lab who swore she could tell Pepsi from Coke with 100% accuracy.  Well, you know what I did: we used clean lab containers to do a blind taste test of about twelve trials. She failed miserably, unable even to deviate from randomness in her identification (I used corn-syrup versions of both). I think I won some money on that one, and I didn’t participate myself. From now on, for me it’s “No Coke—Pepsi!”

*Finally, a spoof of the Democrats’ 2028 campaign from The Babylon Bee (h/t Jay)

As preparations geared up for the 2028 presidential election, the Democratic Party unveiled its new campaign slogan of “We Hate Capitalism, Hot Chicks, and the Jews.”

The party expressed belief that the new slogan would convey a clear message about the party’s values while broadening its appeal to new groups of potential voters.

“We were looking for a slogan that would communicate our agenda of abolishing capitalism, Jewish people, and objectively attractive women,” one Democrat source said. “This new slogan couldn’t be more perfect.”

Party leaders reportedly scrapped other suggestions to return their platform and slogan to a more patriotic, America-loving tone in favor of embracing messaging that more accurately captured the hatred of economic success, Jews, and natural beauty.

“Beautiful women and Jews, much like capitalism, cannot be the future of this country,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, who was given input to keep him from running again. “Personally, I’m for Justin Trudeau, but they tell me he’s not qualified or something because he’s ‘Canadian.’ Whatever that means.”

Insiders said that creating a broad platform based on hating money, hot chicks, and Jews would be the key to building a strong coalition of voters for the next election cycle. “It’s a perfect mixture of the people who vote for us,” said one Democrat. “Once we find the right candidate who embodies all of those things, we’ll have the election wrapped up.”

At publishing time, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg reportedly had an early advantage to land the party’s nomination due to finding attractive women “icky.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is scaring me by making out his will.

Hili:

The Administrator is writing his will. Ever since Małgorzata died, he thinks out loud, so I hear everything. He’s wondering whether a will can be decorated with photographs. Małgorzata left him a legacy of generosity. She had no siblings. She had two aunts, both of whom died many years ago. The rest of her family were murdered by the Nazis. Technically speaking, the Administrator inherits everything from Małgorzata – that is, the entire urge to share what was once shared between them. But it has to be translated into legal language: distribute belongings, define percentages, allocate the money that will remain after his death. He must do it quickly, because the law requires it. He’s grateful to fate for his granddaughter – that is, his friend’s daughter who adopted him as a substitute grandfather, one she never had, and to whom he can now leave instructions on how to share what remains of him. That makes writing the will easier.

In Polish:

Hili: Administrator pisze testament. Odkąd Małgorzata umarła, myśli głośno, więc wszystko słyszę. Zastanawia się, czy można testament ozdobić zdjęciami. Małgorzata w spadku zostawiła mu chęć dzielenia się. Nie miała rodzeństwa. Miała dwie ciotki, które zmarły wiele lat temu. Resztę rodziny wymordowali naziści. Technicznie rzecz biorąc, Administrator dziedziczy po Małgorzacie wszystko, czyli całą chęć dzielenia się tym, co było dotąd wspólne. Trzeba to jednak przełożyć na język prawniczy: rozdać przedmioty, określić w procentach, komu ile pieniędzy z tego, co po nim zostanie. Musi to zrobić szybko, bo tego wymaga prawo. Dziękuje losowi, że ma wnuczkę, to znaczy, za córkę przyjaciela, która adoptowała go jako substytut dziadka, którego nigdy nie miała, a której może zostawić instrukcje w kwestii dzielenia się tym, co po nim zostanie. To ułatwia pisanie testament

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

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy.  Ray got it right.

From CinEmma:

From David:

Masih is again quiet today, but we have Islamic violation of women’s rights promoted in a retweet by J. K. Rowling:

The brutality Afghan women endure under Taliban rule is not just a national crisis—it is a stain on the conscience of the world. Girls as young as ten are being stripped of education. Women are being beaten in the streets for the simple act of trying to live. Every day, their… pic.twitter.com/wLkFiRmxT9

— WDI.Afghanistan (@WDIAfghanistan) August 2, 2025

. . . and another:

She is one of millions, an Afghan woman with credentials and dreams, now in prison just for being female.

Since the fall of the Republic, Afghan women have been banned from school, work, and public life.

August 15: Join the global protest, for freedom of Afghan women and girls. pic.twitter.com/znhSuxa5PK

— Jahanzeb Wesa (@JahanzebWe) August 1, 2025

From reader Michael: cat fights! TRIGGER WARNING: Feline violence; may be disturbing.

This is real wrestling not fake and scripted 😂 pic.twitter.com/86yf3pFGg2

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) August 1, 2025

From Simon; a governor invokes prayer and fasting to end drought. Are we in the Middle Ages?

Nothing says climate policy like skipping brunch and hoping the sky notices.

— 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 (@sundaedivine.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T13:54:43.986Z

From Cate, who wrote me, “You won’t approve of someone greasing a pole with a bird feeder to repel squirrels, but you WILL enjoy watching a squirrel slide down that pole.” She was right on the first count, wrong on the second.

Squirrel sliding down the greased bird feeder pole pic.twitter.com/HIt08ktmS7

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 1, 2025

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Frenchman, apparently not Jewish, lived just a bit more than a month in Auschwitz before he died. https://t.co/qxEtChfUS2

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 3, 2025

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. I may have posted the first one already, but it’s worth seeing again.  Raspberries for Colossal Biosciences!

Are we settled on No-a for the neo-Moa?

— Tori Herridge (@toriherridge.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T21:19:43.029Z

And he gave two exclamation marks for this one:

The thing about entomology is, there are always weirder bugs than anything you could imagine on your own. Here's Cysteodemus wislizeni, a blister beetle from west Texas.

— Alex Wild (@alexwild.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T20:20:21.585Z