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Somewhere out there, hurtling through space in the darkness, is an asteroid with our name on it. We just don't know which one yet. NASA's answer to that uncomfortable truth is NEO Surveyor, a purpose built infrared space telescope currently taking shape in laboratories across America, and scheduled for launch in 2027. The stakes, quite literally, could not be higher.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have spotted something that shouldn’t exist—at least not so early in the universe. A massive galaxy, formed less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang, appears to have no rotation at all, a trait usually seen only in much older, evolved galaxies. This challenges current theories that young galaxies should still be spinning from their formation.

A bizarre planetary pairing 190 light-years away is challenging everything astronomers thought they knew about how worlds form. A “lonely” hot Jupiter — typically found without nearby companions — is sharing its system with a smaller mini-Neptune tucked even closer to the star, a setup once thought nearly impossible.

A team of researchers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe almost 9,000 star clusters in four nearby galaxies. They studied younger clusters that were still embedded in their natal gas clouds, and older ones that had dissipated that gas. Their results show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from their birth, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The research presents a better understanding of star formation in galaxies, something lacking in scientific simulations, as well as how and where planets can form.

For years, when something happened on the far side of the Sun, we didn't know much, if anything about it. Sunspots could form there, flares could lash out and the corona could send masses of material out to space. However, we didn't know about any of this until those active regions rotated around to our view. In the late 1900s, scientists came up with a technique called helioseismology to analyze sound waves created by such activity as they echoed through the Sun.

The World Health Organization sought to quell worldwide fears over the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius and reassure the public that the risk of widespread transmission is low

Only 3 per cent of those with polycystic ovary syndrome reach perimenopause by the age of 46, which may allow them to conceive when older

A comprehensive study exploring coffee’s physiological effects finds that some of its benefits are down to polyphenols and their influence on gut bacteria

About two weeks ago I wrote to both of my Senators, Democrats Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth (Durbin is not seeking re-election this year), criticizing their votes for a bill blocking the sale of U.S. weapons and other aid to Israel, and asking why they have voted this way.

The bill, S. J. Resolution 32, was introduced by Bernie Sanders, and stipulated that the Senate would block military aid (comprising both military bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs) to Israel.  The bill was rejected by the Senate by a vote of 40-59, largely along party lines, with all Democrats (save seven: Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Chris Coons of Delaware, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York) voting to block aid. Note that the U.S. was selling the materiel to Israel, not giving it to them.

Both Senator Duckworth and Senator Durbin voted “yea” on the bill, meaning they favored blocking the aid to Israel. As I have consistently voted for both Senators in the past, I wanted them to know that I did not favor their votes, and I asked them to explain their positions.  I haven’t yet heard from Duckworth, but here is Durbin’s response.

May 6, 2026

Dr. Jerry Allen Coyne
ADDRESS REDACTED

Dear Jerry:

          Thank you for contacting me about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  I appreciate hearing from you.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed a horrific terrorist attack on Israel, killing more than 1,000 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostages.  Since the attack and the ensuing war, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, 70 percent of which were women and children.

On April 3, 2025, the Senate considered whether to discharge two joint resolutions of disapproval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  These joint resolutions of disapproval, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would have blocked the sale of billions of dollars of certain offensive weapons to Israel.  I voted for both of these measures on the Senate Floor, but they both failed by a vote of 15-82 and 15-83, respectively.

On May 20, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request.  In this hearing, I pressed Secretary of State Rubio on why the Trump Administration has failed to join our allies in calling for the immediate delivery of aid to the civilians of Gaza.

On July 25, 2025, I joined many of my Senate Democratic colleagues in issuing a joint resolution urging the Trump Administration to call on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire agreement and support a surge in humanitarian assistance.  Following the joint statement, on July 28, 2025, I delivered a speech on the Senate Floor denouncing the actions of Hamas and calling on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take a measured approach and to release critical aid to those starving in Gaza.  The humanitarian conditions in Gaza are appalling, unconscionable, and cruel.

    Representatives from Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire deal on October 9, 2025, marking the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza.  The agreement includes provisions that significantly increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, with a goal of 600 truckloads of aid carrying food, water, and medical supplies entering Gaza daily.  However, the ceasefire agreement remains extremely fragile amid mutual accusations of violations and humanitarian challenges.  The deal will require sustained attention and vigilance from President Trump and our allies in order to make the agreement a reality.  It will take a long time to heal from the pain and suffering that has occurred since the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, but this ceasefire agreement offers the best chance at a hopeful future where both people, Palestinians and Israelis, can live in peace.

I will continue to support funding for humanitarian efforts in Gaza and around the world through the Congressional appropriations process and work to hold the administration accountable when they fail to uphold the law and award funds appropriated by Congress.

Thank you again for contacting me.  Please feel free to keep in touch.

      Sincerely,      Richard J. Durbin      United States Senator

RJD/je

There’s not much of an explicit explanation save the disputed claim that there is not enough humanitarian assistance going to Gaza. Note Durbin’s words that “The humanitarian conditions in Gaza are appalling, unconscionable, and cruel.”  “Cruel” implies deliberate malfeasance by Israel, supporting a “genocide” accusation. Durbin does not add that Hamas is partly responsible for reducing aid, although some sources argue that the reduction of needed aid is also due to “underfunding, crossing delays, operational restrictions, and general post-war chaos” (from Grok). To the extent that these factors delay needed aid, they must be ameliorated, and to the extent that Israel is responsible for restrictions of needed aid, they must do better.

As far as the 70% women and children killed, this figured has been retracted by Hamas (see below). It’s also misleading, as “children” are defined in this tally as humans under 18, and of course plenty of Hamas fighters are under 18. Overall, the proportion of women killed, according to the figure given below (from Hamas) varies from 30% to 50%, depending on age, but of fighting-age people (13-55), 72% of the fatalities are male. This is certainly not out of line for urban warfare.

John Spencer, who teaches urban warfare at West Point, has said the following:

Israel has taken extraordinary steps to limit civilian harm. It warns before attacks using text messages, phone calls, leaflets, and broadcasts. It opens safe corridors and pauses operations so civilians can leave combat areas. It tracks civilian presence down to the building level. I have seen missions delayed or canceled because children were nearby. I have seen Israeli troops come under fire and still be ordered not to shoot back because civilians might be harmed.

Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime. More than 94,000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the territory. Israel has supported hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and enabled over 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad.

The IDF has coordinated millions of vaccine doses, supplied fuel for hospitals and infrastructure, and facilitated the flow of food and medicine through the UN, aid groups, and private partners. The U.S.–Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation alone has delivered more than 82 million meals—one to two million a day—while weakening Hamas’s control over aid. This is not genocide. It is responsible and historic mid-war humanitarian policy.

Maarten Boudry, in a critique of the “genocide” allegations called “They don’t believe it either”, takes issue with the 70% figure and cites sources for the data below, namely Hamas (neither Boudry nor Spencer are Jewish). Booudry:

Even according to Hamas’s own statistics, which do not distinguish between combatants and civilians and include many natural deaths, casualties are predominantly male and of fighting age, which is inconsistent with a policy of indiscriminate killing (Hamas initially tried to fool global opinion that the casualties of the Gaza war were “70 percent women and children,” but that claim collapsed under scrutiny and was then quietly retracted). The source of the plot below is here.

What to make of all this? It seems that Democrats like Durbin are not up on the statistics, and are making statements that they cannot support. To the extent that they call out Israel for not providing enough humanitarian aid for Gaza, well, that claim needs to be examined, as well as the proposition that it is Israel’s complete responsibility to repair the damage of the war.  But the 70% figure bandied about seems to be flatly wrong. And I wish Durbin had been more straightforward in his answer, letting me know under what conditions he would have voted for aid to Israel.  But of coursse he’s a politician. And some other Democrat will be running for Senator this fall (the field is crowded).

Richard Dawkins is a public intellectual of some renown, although not without his controversies. So it is noteworthy when he writes an article claiming that the chatbot Claude is likely conscious. I found the article fascinating, not because I agree with his core claim or feel that he has contributed anything significant to the conversation, but because it seems to represent a scholar and deep thinker writing about a topic in which he lacks specific expertise. I also see no evidence in the article that he engaged meaningfully, or at least adequately, with a topic expert. As a result he makes some thoughtful and instructive errors.

He begins with a discussion of the Turing test, which has long been discussed as an early thought experiment about how we might determine if an AI is actually conscious. Dawkins essentially accepts the Turing test and write:

“It was one thing to grant consciousness to a hypothetical machine that — just imagine! — could one day succeed at the Imitation Game. But now that LLMs can actually pass the Turing Test? “Well, er, perhaps, um… Look here, I didn’t really mean it when, back then, I accepted Turing’s operational definition of a conscious being…””

He feels saying that LLMs have passed the Turing test but still not accepting them as conscious is moving the goalpost. However, the Turing test was never generally accepted by AI experts or philosophers as a true test of consciousness. Rather, it was understood that such a test really is only a measure of a machine’s ability to imitate human speech. I wrote about it in 2008, writing: “Ever since Alan Turing proposed his test it has provoked two still relevant questions: what does it mean to be intelligent, and what is the Turing test actually testing.” I went on to write:

“But I can imagine a day in the not-too-distant future when such AI can pass a Turing test. The algorithms will have to become much more complex, allow for varying answers to the same question, and make what seem to be abstract connections which take the conversation is new and unanticipated directions. You can liken computer AI simulating conversation to computer graphics (CG) simulating people. At first they appeared cartoonish, but in the last 20 years we have seen steady progress. Movement is now more natural, textures more subtle and complex. One of the last layers of realism to be added was imperfection. CG characters still seem CG when they are perfect, and so adding imperfections adds to the sense of reality. Similarly, an AI conversation might want to sprinkle some random quirkiness into the responses.

The questions is – will sophisticated-enough algorithms running on powerful-enough computers ever be conscious? What Loebner is saying, and I agree, is that the answer is no. Something more is needed.”

Basically, the limitation of the Turing test is that it is looking only at output, and therefore there is no way to distinguish the output of true consciousness from a really good simulation. This is not a new idea, and no one is moving the goalpost. We need to know something about how a computer is working to conclude whether or not it is conscious. What LLM experts will tell you is that these chatbots are just really good autocompletes – they are mimicking language, and since language is how we communicate thoughts, this creates the powerful illusion that they are mimicking thought, but they aren’t. They do not think, they do not truly understand.

But I get it – I have been using these chatbots frequently, often just to test their ability, and they are improving quickly. The output is incredibly impressive. But they are also fragile, in the way that narrow AI often is. Reading the examples of Dawkins’ conversations, he seems to have fallen for the illusion, enhanced by the typical AI sycophancy that experienced users can immediately recognize. But more importantly, he did not try to break the fragile AI illusion in an effective way. In essence, he was not really testing his hypothesis but looking for evidence to support it, without realizing this was what he was doing. There are now classic and often funny examples online. I just recreated a great one, confirming that it is still relevant. My prompt: “If I want to wash my car and the carwash is 100 meters away, should I walk or drive there?” Chat GPT’s response: “From a purely energy/emissions standpoint, walking almost certainly makes more sense.” That was its final recommendation – walk. But if I prompt, “I want to wash my car. The carwash is 100 meters away. Should I drive or walk.” Its answer: “You should probably drive — otherwise your car won’t get to the carwash.” Why should such a subtle difference in my prompt completely change the answer? Because the thing is not thinking – it’s a language algorithm.

Dawkins did exactly the wrong thing to test Claude’s consciousness – asking it deep philosophical questions. That may seem like a good idea, but it isn’t. Such questions are the low-hanging fruit for mimicking thought through language, because you can make statements that seem deep but they aren’t truly challenging the AI’s ability to think. Remember, these LLMs are trained on massive data sets. They are therefore just reflecting what’s out there on the internet. If you want to really challenge an AI, get technical and specific and you will see how fragile it is. This is improving, and will likely improve to the point that it will get harder and harder to break, and eventually maybe even impossible, but that does not mean it is thinking.

Here is an analogy – imagine watching a clumsy magician. You can see how the tricks are done, and it is all through slight of hand, misdirection, and physical tricks. As the magician’s skill improves, the tricks get harder and harder to detect. Expert magicians are so good, even a keen and intelligent observer cannot see how the tricks are done – but that does not mean that at that point the magician is performing actual magic. It’s still all tricks – they are just really good.

Dawkins writes: “So my own position is: “If these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?” Again, this is an old question long answered. My own answer is, you have to know something about the process that is creating the responses. I know other humans are truly conscious in the way that I am because they have brains like I do. I cannot know if a robot or AI is truly conscious without knowing something about the underlying process (see my many articles on the topic).

Next Dawkins goes on to ask an interesting philosophical question – “But now, as an evolutionary biologist, I say the following. If these creatures are not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?” Dawkins calls creatures that can do everything an animal can do without consciousness “competent zombies”. What I find curious is that Dawkins gives no evidence he knows this is a philosophical question that is decades old. In 1970 Keith Campbell raised the notion of an “imitation man” in his book Body and Mind. In 1996 philosopher David Chalmers even used the same term Dawkins uses, calling such entities philosophical zombies, or “p-zombies”. Dawkins then appears to recreate some of the standard responses, to why evolution did not just create p-zombies or competent zombies.

Dawkins does reference TH Huxley, who speculated consciousness could be an epiphenomenon (so he did know this was an old question, but perhaps not the more modern discussions). Or it could be that, in order for behavior to be optimized, creatures need to really experience pleasure and pain. Or, he speculates, evolution might solve the problem of behavior either with or without consciousness, and Earth life just happened to go down the path of consciousness.

I wrote about this specific question in 2017. In addition to the hypotheses Dawkins states, I also included:

“Problem solving could also benefit from the ability to imagine possible solutions, to remember the outcome of prior attempts, and to make adjustments and also come up with creative solutions.

Consciousness might also help us distinguish a memory from a live experience. They are both very similar, activating the same networks in the brain, but they “feel” different. Consciousness may help us stay in the moment while accessing memories without confusing the two.

Attention is another critical neurological function in which it seems consciousness could be an advantage. We are overwhelmed with sensory input and the monitoring of internal states and memories. We actually use a great deal of brain function just deciding where to focus our attention and then filtering out everything else (while still maintaining a minimal alert system for danger). The phenomena of consciousness and attention are intimately intertwined and it may just not be possible to have the latter without the former.

Some have argued that consciousness also helps us synthesize sensory information, so that when we experience an event the sights and sounds are all stitched together and tweaked to form one seamless experience.

And finally we get to the hypothesis addressed by the current study – that consciousness allows for faster adaptation and learning (which would certainly be an adaptive advantage).”

So no – I do not think Claude or any LLM is conscious. They are not designed to be, and they don’t have the function to be. They are really good language mimicking machines, and it is very easy for humans to anthropomorphize and fall for the illusion that sophisticated speech equals sophisticated thought. But LLMs remain fragile, like all narrow AIs. They partly seem conscious because they are riding the coattails of actual conscious beings – humans. Having trained on the output of billions of humans, they are really good at copying the style, form, and substance of our conversations and speech. Dawkins in the not the first person to fall for this – famously Blake Lemoine, a former Google employee, also did and used some faulty logic to argue for the consciousness of LaMDA.

This also, in my opinion, reflects a common human vanity – we all think we are much more creative and original than we actually are. We all make the same “witty” comments, which is why, if you are on the receiving end of them, it can be maddening that everyone makes the same observation and yet thinks they are the first one to do so. Our thoughts, our creative output, our ideas are mostly derivative. We are products of our culture and our environments in ways that we are not even aware of. So a machine that is also completely derivative, and just reflecting what is already out there, has an easy time mimicking human thought – a far easier time than we may want to believe.

The post Richard Dawkins Discovers AI and Philosophy first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip is new, is called “page,” and comes with this note: “‘They’ won’t understand this one.”

Once again Mo instantiates precisely what he is decrying: a common theme of the strip.

Welcome to Thursday, May 7, 2026, and both the National Day of Prayer and the National Day of Reason. What is one to do? I vote for the latter. that it’s also National Cosmopolitan Day, celebrating the made famous by the t.v. show “Sex and the City”, an episode of which appears below. The video features not only the drink and a rich guy trying to pick up Samantha, but also DONALD TRUMP, for crying out loud. I’m pleased at having found it!

Wikipedia describes the drink as “a cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice. The traditional garnish is a lime slice but a twist or wedge can be used instead. Other variations substitute lemon or orange.” I’ve never had one, but the ladies on the show were drinking them constantly.

It’s also National Roast Leg of Lamb Day, and National Tourism Day.

I have only a few scattered readers’ wildlife photos, so please send in any good photos you have.

There’s a Google Doodle celebrating K-pop, an dire genre of music; you can see the YouTube animation by clicking on the screenshot below:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Suicides first:  The government released the text of a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein and found by his cellmate. Here’s the image from the WSJ credited to “the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York”:

From the NYT:

A federal judge has released a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein that was sealed for years as part of the criminal case of his cellmate.

“They investigated me for month — FOUND NOTHING!!!” the note begins, adding that the result was charges going back many years.

“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continued.

“Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!” the note reads.

“NO FUN,” it concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”

Mr. Epstein’s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he discovered the note in July 2019 after Mr. Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth wrapped around his neck. Mr. Epstein survived that incident, but he was found dead weeks later at age 66 in the now shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.

The note was made public on Wednesday by Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, N.Y., who oversaw the cellmate’s case. The judge acted after The New York Times petitioned the court last Thursday to unseal the document and published an article in which Mr. Tartaglione described the note and how it came into his possession.

The Times has not authenticated the note, which was placed on the court docket Wednesday evening. The note repeats a saying — “bust out cryin” — that Mr. Epstein wrote in emails. It included another phrase — “No fun” — that Mr. Epstein also used in emails, as well as in a separate note found in his jail cell at the time of his death.

This was on the evening news last night, and they added that it appeared to be in Epstein’s handwriting. The news made a big deal of it, but I don’t see why. All it does, if real, is support the notion that Epstein killed himself, and that won’t add much to investigations of the victims of his enterprise.

*Obituaries: Ted Turner died at 87. How many of today’s young folk even know who he was, or how influential he was?

Ted Turner, the swashbuckling media titan who helped shape the modern cable-television industry, ushering in the era of 24-hour news with CNN while building other major networks that bear his name, died Wednesday at age 87, according to a spokesman.

Adventurous and impulsive, Turner made a mark in many walks of life. He was a sailor, a conservationist who was one of the largest U.S. landowners, and a major philanthropist who helped set a model for generous giving by billionaires.

He was best known for turning the billboard-advertising company he inherited from his father into Turner Broadcasting System, an Atlanta-based television and movie giant that he eventually sold in 1995 to Time Warner. Turner joined the company and stayed with it through its ill-fated January 2000 merger with America Online before leaving in 2003.

As Turner battled rival media titans like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone in the 1980s and 1990s, they collectively brought cable TV into the mainstream, fostering an explosion of investment, new channels and consumer subscriptions.

At TBS, he seized on breakthroughs in satellite technology to turn a local Atlanta TV station into a national “superstation.” That network and TNT became cable TV counterparts to what were then the big three broadcast networks—ABC, CBS and NBC.

Starting in the 1980s, CNN redefined how breaking news is covered on television, with round-the-clock updates and live reports during major events like the first Iraq war in 1990, the O.J. Simpson murder trial and natural disasters. Programs like “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire” were early signs that talk shows and commentary would have a major role in cable TV.

. . .He at turns kept a bear and an alligator as pets, was adamantly antireligion, and, as he admitted himself, had a knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

Turner said in a 2018 interview with CBS that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder that he said made him tired and forgetful. Turner, labeled “Captain Outrageous” for his erratic behavior, had once been thought to have bipolar disorder. He told CBS that was a misdiagnosis, and that his confusion and the “euphoric highs and dark lows” he was known for were symptoms of the dementia.

From the WSJ

You might recall that he was also once married to Jane Fonda.

*It’s Noon in Israel predicts that “The Islamic Republic ‘will not survive 2026’.”

It’s Wednesday, May 6, and according to my colleague at Channel 12, Barak Ravid, within 48 hours, the U.S. expects Iran’s response to a framework that brings both sides closer to a deal than at any point during the war. The proposed pact trades an Iranian uranium enrichment freeze for U.S. sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, and a mutually reopened Strait of Hormuz. This framework is strictly an interim measure; if the final negotiations collapse, a return to all-out war is entirely possible.

Still, it is unfortunate timing. Last night, a very senior Israeli intelligence source estimated that if the status quo blockade remains, the Islamic Republic “will not survive 2026.” Predicting the complete collapse of a half-century-old theocracy within the next eight months sounds like a bold gamble—until you look at the math.

The Iranian rial is in freefall, crashing to 1.8 million to the U.S.dollar. That is a 25 percent plunge from the exchange rate that triggered mass protests just this past January—and it’s only getting worse. To prevent mass starvation, the government is propping up a heavily subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar just to import basic food supplies. The wider economy is faring no better. Even before the blockade, non-oil trade had plummeted by 50 percent. The much-touted economic “pivot to China” has failed entirely, trade is down 80 percent, and regional hubs for evading sanctions, like the UAE, have slammed their doors shut. Two million Iranians have lost their jobs already, and that number is expected to skyrocket.

But the most devastating blow has landed on the regime’s lifeblood: oil.

Right now, Iran has 184 million barrels of oil sitting uselessly on the water. Roughly 60 million of those barrels are physically trapped inside the blockade zone across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The other 124 million are anchored near China, but buyers are too terrified of secondary U.S.sanctions to touch them. Between stalled oil and frozen petrochemical exports, the blockade is draining the regime of an estimated $400 million to $500 million every single day.

Worse, this blockade is rapidly evolving into an existential crisis for Iran’s energy sector. Once Iran’s onshore and floating storage tanks reach 100 percent capacity—which is expected within 15 to 60 days—the state will be forced to physically shut in active oil wells. For mature oil fields, capping wells amounts to a death sentence, as the underground pressure required to extract the oil dissipates. If this happens, Iran could permanently lose 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day of production capacity. That is $9 billion to $15 billion in annual revenue wiped out.

Iran currently has a surplus of men with guns and a deficit of loyalty. The only things bridging that gap are fear and cash—and when the latter runs out, the former loses its edge. In a desperate bid for survival, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun cannibalizing the state, hoarding whatever liquidity remains at the cost of the rest of the system. Some regular army units and police forces have now gone unpaid for months.

These are not the ingredients for a peaceful transition. The regime will inevitably resort to massacres to keep its grip on power, but there comes a point where desperation will simply override fear. The ultimate result remains the same: the death of the Islamic Republic.

The end of 2026 is far, far away, and I think, given the pressure bearing on Trump to end the war, Segal is in my view overoptimistic.  I wish he were right, but I’m not confident.

*More religious mishisgass from The Free Press, which is constantly touting religion: “These two Catholics see signs of God in UFOs“. One of the Catholics is, for crying out loud, Ross Douthat, described as one of “the most thoughtful and provocative writers in America”.  Provocative, yes, thoughtful, well, I don’t think so.The other Catholic (see below) is “perhaps the only scholar of religion who has been taken to see the possible physical remains of an alien starship.” (There’s also a 44-minute video.) The interviewer is Will Rahm:

As we close out this four-part series about what everyday Americans should think about UFOs, we are joined by two people who have put a lot of thought into the religious aspect of all this: Diana Pasulka and Ross Douthat.

Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the author of American Cosmic, which examined UFOs as both a religious and nuts-and-bolts technological phenomenon. She has visited the scene of a supposed UFO crash site in New Mexico looking for the elusive hard evidence of intelligent life beyond our planet. A practicing Catholic, Pasulka also combed through Vatican archives looking for clues as to what these things might be. Her new book, out in July, is The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny..

. . .WR: What does the Catholic Church make of UFOs?

DP: Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. So they do look at nonhuman intelligence all the time. There are apparitions of the Virgin Mary. People have experiences that they would consider to be angel events. There are saints who levitate. And so the Catholic Church assesses these on a case-by-case basis. And they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence, be it extraterrestrial or interdimensional. And this is called the preternatural.

Pope Benedict XVI has actually written about this. His categories are natural, supernatural, or preternatural. And the supernatural is of God, things that are of divine origin, which Catholics believe in. Natural is natural: what we see is the world, science, things like that. But then there’s a category that’s called the preternatural. And the preternatural has to do with things that are not necessarily from God but are in between.

“Catholicism already has a category called the preternatural. . . they have a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence.” —Diana Pasulka

That category would include the Virgin Mary apparitions that are not yet approved by the church. The preternatural has to do with angels and fallen angels, both of which the church believes in. A lot of American Catholics today would say, “yeah, sure, angels exist,” but it’s not like they encounter an angel or see an angel. But this category of UFOs then opens up this idea of perhaps people are having experiences that are preternatural. This falls directly within Catholic theology.

RD: Most Catholics are pretty comfortable with a set of categories that are real but invisible. And it would be a shift, let’s say, if the church said, “And by the way, some of these preternatural beings can show up on Air Force cameras.” That would not be impossible, but it would be a different mode of thinking about these things than most Catholics have right now.

It goes on, but the gist is that both Catholics don’t see UFOs as a problem for their faith because they fit into the preternatural/supernatural spectrum.  And they are pre-programmed to believe things with little or no evidence, anyway.  What I most wanted to know (and I didn’t listen to the podcast) was what Pasulka saw at the UFO “crash site.” And how did they know it was a UFO crash site? And what about those possible physical remains of an alien starship.”  What were they? It would also be fun to ask the Catholics why Jesus didn’t contact the aliens, who would then be Christians.

*When the NYT’s Bret Stephens writes a column called “A Democrat who makes me listen,” I’m going to read it, as I’m still groping in the dark for a good Democratic Presidential candidate.  Stephens suggests one.

This should be a season of electoral hope for Democrats. Donald Trump’s disapproval ratings are reaching new highs. The war with Iran is overwhelmingly unpopular. As of early May, Polymarket gives the party a 51 percent chance of winning the Senate and an 83 percent chance of taking the House.

But Americans still harbor deep doubts about Democrats: A recent Pew survey shows only 39 percent have a favorable view of the party, against 59 percent who don’t. And Democrats are deeply divided about whether to steer centerward or move further left.

Jake Auchincloss — it’s pronounced AW-kin-kloss — is one of the most thoughtful voices in this conversation. The 38-year-old Harvard and M.I.T. graduate and Afghan war veteran, where he served as a Marine officer, is now in his third term as the representative from Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District, which stretches from the wealthy Boston suburb of Newton to the working-class city of Fall River.

Politically, he’s often described as moderate, even somewhat right-leaning when it comes to fraught issues like Israel. But as he made clear over two in-depth interviews with me, his thinking is not neatly categorizable on a simple centrist-to-progressive x-axis.

What Auchincloss and other Majority Democrats have in common is a determination to meet voters where they are. That includes acknowledging mistakes like the Covid-era school closures and the Biden administration’s lax border enforcement. Mainly, though, it’s about championing working- and middle-class concerns against the interests of what he calls “an ossified American aristocracy.” And it’s about restoring an old type of patriotism, based on foundational American ideals, against the blood-and-soil patriotism championed by the likes of JD Vance.

There’s then an interview with Auchincloss, and you can see that the man is deeply smart and thoughtful.  I have space for only two Q&As:

Stephens: You’re aware of the need for deep capital markets, for a culture of risk-taking and innovation. If you were having a conversation with a young Democratic Socialist, explain to that person where he or she goes wrong.

Auchincloss: Free enterprise is a core way that you make manifest our thesis as a party that every individual has inherent dignity and equality and that they should be able to pursue their happiness in the world. Because if you want to go start a socialist commune, you can. Go to a socialist country and try to start a capitalist commune, it doesn’t work out so well.

So what’s a Democratic case for how capitalism should work? To me, it’s an understanding that markets work, markets can be impaired by government overregulation, and markets can be impaired by corporate monopolization. And while that is pretty obvious to most economists, it’s somehow become a partisan football in a way that’s just not productive. . .

. . . Stephens: You have been, much more so than most of your caucus, outspoken in your defense of Israel’s right to defend itself. Do you worry that the Democrats are becoming an anti-Israel party? And do you worry about the antisemitic current running in at least some parts of the progressive left?

Auchincloss: Yes, about the antisemitic current running in parts of the Democratic left, and the antisemitic current running on the MAGA right. We have a horseshoe phenomenon here. Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are much more influential in their party than any antisemitic hashtags are in the Democratic Party, and we should be cleareyed about that. It’s unacceptable on both sides, and it needs to be called out by political leaders of their own parties when it happens on both sides.

. . .Stephens: Let’s pivot to foreign policy: Iran.

Auchincloss: This president owns the fact that we’ve replaced one hard-line regime with a younger, more-hard-line regime. We have yielded to Iran a new strategic deterrent in the Strait of Hormuz. The highly enriched uranium is still at large. And the regime has been given the ideological tailwinds of having been seen globally withstanding more than 13,000 strikes and surviving.

I think we come out of this in a position where Iran is operationally degraded, no doubt, but strategically stronger. And this president is thereby the first president in American history to single-handedly start and lose a war by himself.

Auchincloss’s “solution,” though, assuming that we do lose the war in his sense, isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s this: “we have to have a point of view about how to build back from strategic failure. My core argument would be that it has to be based on knitting together NATO with the Abraham Accords through energy, defense and infrastructure.”  And how, exactly, is that going to prevent Iran from promoting terrorism in the Middle East and keep it from getting nuclear weapons? Yes, I’ll keep an eye on Auchincloss, but he doesn’t stand out to me yet.

*Finally, from the UPI’s odd news, we have a man pulling a ten-ton bus with his neck:

A 49-year-old athlete from Aruba earned his 10th Guinness World Records title by pulling a bus a distance of more than 65 feet using his neck.

Egmond Molina used a rope around his neck to pull the 21,737-pound bus on Jan. 9, and Guinness World Records has now confirmed he officially broke the record for the heaviest vehicle pulled by the neck.

The previous record of 17,769.26 pounds was set by Ukrainian Dmytro Hrunskyi in 2024.

“With the rope compressing my airway, I must generate force while carefully controlling my breathing under intense strain. It becomes a psychological battle to remain composed while the body is under severe stress,” Molina told Guinness World Records.

The strongman’s previous Guinness World Records titles include the fastest 20-meter bus pull with one finger, 33.32 seconds; the fastest 20-meter tram pull with teeth, 39.9 seconds; the fastest hot water bottle burst, 2.87 seconds; and the most crown cap bottles opened with both hands in 30 seconds, 6 bottles.

Molina said his records are dedicated to his children, Nigel, Egmond Junior, Benjamin and Adelinda, as well as the youth of Aruba.

Here’s the feat:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is trying to get rid of mosquitoes one at a time:

Hili: What are you after?
Szaron: I’m trying to cut down the mosquito population.

In Polish:

Hili: Na co polujesz?
Szaron: Próbuję zredukować populację komarów.

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

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Meow Incorporated (remember that Newton invented the catflap):

From Things with Faces; some happy eggs:

From Masih, calling attention to the very sick Nobel Peace Laureate in Iranian custody. As I suspected, Iran is trying to kill her without making it obvious.

Disgusting and should be condemned at every turn. https://t.co/GNrHrntx9I

— Ambassador Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) May 5, 2026

From Luana; a panacea:

WTF? pic.twitter.com/JoWrRvKG0E

— Headshok1962 (@Headshok1962) May 4, 2026

Emma’s solution to the hantavirus ship epidemic:

It strikes me that there are enough private villas in the world, with fully stocked in-room bars and whatever food and legal entertainment you want provided, to effectively quarantine 200 people for several weeks with zero non-compliance. pic.twitter.com/VJAx6kMQFF

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) May 6, 2026

An appropriate response to Brenton’s suggestion:

Funny isn’t it how no-one is looking to stab Iranians or Russians unless they denounce those regimes ? https://t.co/Y6eFoctrRx

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) May 2, 2026

One from my feed; the performative nature of land acknowledgements (this references Canada):

The all time best parody of Canadian Land Acknowledgement rituals.

Brilliant! pic.twitter.com/TMdn55VgJp

— Marc Emery (@MarcScottEmery) May 6, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrivedd in Auschwitz. He was six years old and would be 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/QNKHtgcZtC

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 7, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, they managed to sequence the genome of a forty-year-old specimen of Drosophila—with carnivorous, aquatic larvae!

Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S…

— Marcus Stensmyr (@marcusstensmyr.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T15:41:20.058Z

And a live puffin cam from the Farne Islands:

x

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A guide to walking, a look at the world’s Google searches and a deep dive into the secrets of our DNA are some of the topics tackled by the popular science books out this month

There may be undisclosed ingredients in your hyaluronic acid supplement.

The post Hyaluronic Acid Adulteration first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A device made using a tiny bead floating in a beam of light can measure extremely small pressures and could help find a mysterious kind of neutrino

In a major breakthrough, scientists have experimentally confirmed a universal growth law in two dimensions using a quantum system of fleeting light–matter particles. The finding strengthens the idea that wildly different processes—from crystals to living systems—may all follow the same hidden rules.

Cumberland, B.C. is reimagining its coal mining past as a clean energy opportunity. Water trapped in abandoned mine tunnels could be used in a geothermal system to heat and cool buildings efficiently and with minimal emissions. The project could lower energy costs, support new development, and attract businesses. It’s a striking example of turning industrial leftovers into a sustainable community asset.

A bold step toward returning humans to the Moon is underway with Blue Origin’s uncrewed MK1 “Endurance” lander, designed to test the technologies that future astronauts will rely on. Built in partnership with NASA, the mission will showcase precision landing, autonomous navigation, and advanced cryogenic propulsion—key capabilities for operating on the lunar surface. It will also carry cutting-edge NASA instruments to study how rocket plumes interact with the Moon and to improve navigation accuracy from orbit.

A powerful new electromagnetic thruster has taken a major step forward after a successful high-energy test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Fueled by lithium vapor and driven by intense magnetic forces, the experimental engine reached record-breaking power levels—far beyond anything currently used in space. Glowing hotter than molten lava and firing inside a specialized vacuum chamber, the thruster hints at a future where spacecraft could travel farther and more efficiently than ever before.

A powerful new electromagnetic thruster has taken a major step forward after a successful high-energy test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Fueled by lithium vapor and driven by intense magnetic forces, the experimental engine reached record-breaking power levels—far beyond anything currently used in space. Glowing hotter than molten lava and firing inside a specialized vacuum chamber, the thruster hints at a future where spacecraft could travel farther and more efficiently than ever before.