Science

Oxford physicists have created an entirely new type of Schrödinger’s cat-like quantum state using components that are themselves highly quantum in nature. The advance could open new possibilities for more resilient quantum computers and deeper insights into the strange rules that govern the quantum universe.

Here in Michigan, antivaxxers have scored a couple of political victories that are less than is being claimed. What do they mean for public health in the state?

The post Antivaxxers vs. the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

In a recent NASA-supported study, researchers assessed Titan's resource base and how it could be leveraged for ISRU. Compared with other locations under study (the Moon, Mars, etc.), they concluded that there is unrivaled potential for human exploration and settlement.

Svetlana (Lana) Jitomirskaya is a mathematics professor at Berkeley (Wikipedia, which puts her at two other schools, is out of date), and is one of 29 authors (I’m in there, too) on a paper in the Journal of Controversial Ideas, “In Defense of Merit in Science“. Lana is also a winner of the American Academy of Science and Letters’s Barry Prize for distinguished intellectual achievement.

I mention this because she is distressed at the very low math performance of entering students in Berkeley (and other schools in the University of California [UC] system), but did some calculations to show, as Governor Gavin Newsom intended with his 2024 California Education Compact, that the chances of a student getting admitted to a University of California branch are higher the worse the student’s high school is! Newsom and some “progressive” educators are against using standardized tests like the SAT for students applying for college, because they believe standardized tests discriminate against minority students.  Grade-point averages (GPAs) are one predictor of college and post-college success, but grade inflation is eliminating the inter-student variation that made GPAs useful, and data show that standardized tests add substantial predictive value to success (especially for highly selective schools like Berkeley), so it’s better that schools have both kinds of information for applicants.  Nevertheless, in an attempt to achieve “equity,” UC schools have completely barred the use of standardized tests, and that was against the recommendations of both a UC faculty task force and members of the Board of Regents.

At my own University, standardized tests are optional, but, weirdly, are used only when they can help a student get admitted, which seems to defeat the purpose of using a standardized benchmark. Here’s what Grok says about the University of Chicago’s standardized testing policy for admissions:

UChicago has maintained a test-optional policy since implementing it in 2018 as part of its UChicago Empower Initiative (initially focused on expanding access for first-generation and low-income students). This policy applies to all applicants, including domestic, international, and transfer students.

No Harm Testing Policy. In addition to being test-optional, UChicago uses a distinctive “No Harm” policy:

• Submitting SAT or ACT scores is entirely your choice.
• If you submit scores, they are only considered if they would positively affect your chance of admission.
• Scores that could negatively impact your application are not used in the review process.
• You can self-report scores on your application (via Common App or Coalition); official scores are only needed if you’re admitted and enroll.

This approach gives applicants flexibility—strong scores can help, but weaker ones (or not submitting) won’t hurt you.

Lana maintains that the omission of test requirements, (and I’d add the use of  “no harm testing policies”) hurts everyone: reducing the chances of really good students getting into even moderately good schools, while harming students from poorer schools by eliminating the pressure for them to study the “right” way: not memorizing but actually learning the material and learning to think, which you need to get good SAT scores. (It also eliminates the pressure for teachers to teach that way.) If you’re poorly qualified for a college you attend, the chances of you either dropping out or going into a “gut” major are higher.

The argument and the crucial graph is included in Lana’s new article in the Free Press, “Bring Back the SAT”.  You can read it if you’re a subscriber by clicking below, but I’ll reproduce some of her arguments plus the graph:

Lana gives several extended anecdotes about great students, once destined for Berkeley or UC San Diego, not getting in and having to go to community colleges, as well as students who got high grades by memorizing but did poorly in schools because they didn’t really learn to think. Many of those students, due to the negative correlation, get into places like UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.  I’ll mostly summarize the assertions about educational policy. (Quotes from Lana’s article are indented.)

What does an A grade in AP Calculus mean when it is paired with a score of 1 on the national exam? Exactly what a recent UC San Diego report revealed: In too many public schools, grades have become completely decoupled from learning.

None of this was Diego’s fault [his name is changed]. But now, he would face the reality of a world-class university. He would be required to retake calculus at Berkeley before moving on to the grueling upper-division requirements of mechanical engineering. With his immense drive and determination, common sense says he would catch up. Right?

“Getting into calculus in 11th grade is impressive,” I told him during the interview. “How and when did you realize you were good at math?”

“Math was always very difficult for me,” Diego replied. “But I worked hard and memorized all the formulas.”

This is the last thing a math professor wants to hear. Mathematics is not about rote memorization—it’s about conceptual understanding and logical reasoning, and Diego was never taught the difference. Like countless students at schools where teachers don’t understand mathematics themselves, he was instead taught what my colleague Hung-Hsi Wu calls anti-mathematics: a confusing, disconnected collection of unexplained procedures to be memorized for a test—and then immediately forgotten.

On the UC system’s abolition of SATs in 2020 and what it means for students like Diego:

To succeed now, Diego will need to unlearn these habits and rebuild his mathematical foundation from scratch, with much of what he has already learned not helping but standing in the way.

I desperately hope he manages to do so. But statistically, the chances are dangerously low. With the foundational deficiencies Diego demonstrated in his interview, the probability that he will survive his first Berkeley calculus course, even with a barely passing grade, is 50-50. He will spend his entire college career in a frantic, exhausting game of catch-up, and it is far more likely that he will be forced to change his major—leaving a hardworking young man’s confidence badly shaken, his engineering dreams derailed, and significant public resources wasted.

None of this would be as likely if the UC system still used a standardized test benchmark. The SAT was completely abolished for UC admissions by a Board of Regents decision in 2020, driven by concerns that standardized tests disadvantage minority and low-income students. This decision went against the unanimous, data-driven recommendation of the UC faculty task force—and against many of the Board of Regents’ own stated convictions. The SAT, imperfect as it is, measures knowledge of the absolute basics and the ability to reason clearly under a time constraint. An SAT score would have told us—and Diego himself—the truth about his preparation before it was too late.

Even more importantly, preparing for the test is itself a powerful intervention. If Diego knew that the SAT stood between him and a Berkeley engineering degree, his drive would have led him to use free, high-quality resources away from rote memorization and toward real mathematical reasoning. The preparation itself would have rewired his foundation. We failed Diego once by not providing him a decent math education. We should not fail students like him again by removing the incentive to build one themselves.

This is why my UC colleagues and I wrote an open letter to the Regents demanding a return to standardized testing. Within days, it garnered over 1,400 signatures, including those of 60 department chairs across the UC system. This unprecedented consensus is significant because STEM faculty aren’t political activists—they are the ones shaping California’s next generation of mathematicians and engineers.

That is indeed a powerful consensus!

According to Lana, the disconnect between grades and merit involves schools infusing courses with ideology:

Many of my colleagues teaching introductory gateway courses are not so lucky. They report a feeling of the bottom falling out of the classroom. “In my second-year engineering class, a student asked me to explain why 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6,” one professor said. “The lecture had to stop while I explained fractions.”

The root cause of this bifurcation is California’s broken K-12 education. Teachers are trapped in systems that prioritize ideology over subject mastery, pressured by administrators to inflate grades, lower standards, and pass unprepared students along. The state has spent tens of billions of dollars on a high-speed rail line that has yielded zero benefit. It has spent far more, and done far worse, inflicting immense generational damage on California’s youth by failing to provide them a quality K-12 math education.

This is the fundamental reason why we cannot honestly satisfy the Newsom Compact’s goals. The onus for a decent math education has fallen entirely on parents. Those who can afford to move to a good school district or send their kids to after-school programs do so. Children of those who cannot are usually left trapped with subpar math instruction. Meanwhile, the schools that provide rigorous education become increasingly competitive. This is the engine behind the bifurcation we are seeing.

And here’s the critical and completely counterintuitive graph, the result of “progressive” thinking. Lana introduces it this way (bolding is mine)

An analysis of official California Department of Education data reveals that this is a systemic pattern. Over the last decade, the UC system has transitioned from a positive correlation between a high school’s math and English proficiency and its admissions success to a statistically significant negative correlation. Today, the more successful a public high school is at preparing its students, the lower its graduates’ chances of getting into top UC campuses like Berkeley and San Diego.

This is the kind of graph that only a mathematician could produce, as it summarizes a ton of data but to a layperson its point is not immediately grasp-able. (Thanks to Jay Tanzman, who put me onto the article and is a statistician, for explaining it to me.)  It is a plot over time in which the Y-axis values represent correlations: the correlation in one year between the assessed quality of a high school itself (not of a student), and the probability of students from that school being accepted to two UC schools: Berkeley and San Diego.  The points not only fall with time, but have gone below zero into negative territory, showing that the worse the school, the higher the chances of a its students getting into Berkeley and, especially, UC San Diego, where there’s a whopping -0.5 correlation between high school quality and probability of its students getting into UCSD. (If you’re statistically minded, you could say “how BAD a high school you went to is 25% of the reason you got admitted to UC San Diego.”) 

This result is in fact what Newsom and other higher-ups had in mind, for high schools rated of lower quality also have a higher proportion of minority students. This negative correlation largely, says Lana, resulted from an ongoing attempt to achieve equity by upgrading the admission chances of students from poorer schools.  I believe Lana’s point is not that this situation is the result of dropping SATs—for the correlation was already falling before 2020 when SATs were abolished—but that we now need the SATs to be able to assess how good students really are. 

I’m told that nearly all high-school students in California get straight As now, so GPAs are a terrible predictor of success, even though I’m also told that “conventional wisdom” says that GPAs and standardized tests are roughly equally important in predicting success in college. That may be wrong, at least for California, but I’ll depend on diligent readers to look it up.

Whatever the case, it’s certainly true that if you go to a worse school, your chances of getting into the two best UC branches improve! Lana winds up for calling for the reinstatement of SATs, and I’m with her:

It is too late to reintroduce the SAT for the 2026 cycle, but we can still help thousands of students like Diego who will apply to the UC system in 2027. That is why a growing coalition of faculty members is rushing to force an emergency course correction. If a car full of your children is hurtling toward a cliff, it is not the time to create yet another subcommittee. You’ve got to slam on the brakes. The University of California must recognize this academic emergency for what it is and act to immediately restore objective standards to the admissions process.

Now if you’re a “progressive”, you’ll object to her characterizing SATs as “objective”, but that’s an argument for another day.

h/t: Jay Tanzman

I wondered what Bill Maher thought about the sketchy Graham Platner and his run as a Democrat for the Senate seat from Maine. Well, see the video below. Maher realizes that Platner is a “broken person,” but we’re “always electing our reflection in the mirror.”  And he thinks that Dems should still vote for Platner because they need the Senate and we should just get used to America being “a country full of a lot of “broken, horribly educated, phone-addicted sort of nutty people,” and Platner is simply one of those. Maher points out some of our representatives or candidates who are already plenty weird (e.g., Tom Kean Jr., who’s been missing for over 100 days, Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist who wants to put Zionists in concentration camps, and.Victor Marx, who does exorcisms over the phone).

Maher goes off further on Americans: “Everything people ‘know’ now is from social media and shitposting and whatever some other idiot send them  or whatever the Chinese are feeding them on Tik Tok.” This leads to a new breed of voter “who is intensely political but somehow know[s] almost nothing about politics.” True, and also true for “encampers.”

Maher includes Trump as a primo example of brokenness, faulting him for not editing his stream of consciousness (the clips of the Prez are rich), though Maher misses a chance to mention Joyce’s Ulysses (the audience might not know what he meant, though).

This is a pretty good bit, but it’s also somewhat depressing because Maher, though appearing elitist here, does show us how nuts American politics has become.

The guests on Friday’s episode of Real Time were author David Sedaris, political scientist Ian Bremmer, and former National Security Council director Hagar Chemali.  The last two appear in this segment. 

I’ll put up some videos of the World Cup games or highlights that interest me. Here are 20 minutes of highlights between Brazil and Morocco, which was tied 1-1 at the end.

Summary from the BBC:

Vinicius Jr spared Brazil the embarrassment of defeat in an opening World Cup match for the first since 1934 as his spectacular solo goal earned a draw for the five-time winners against Morocco at the New York New Jersey Stadium.

Brazil fell behind in the 21st minute when Ismael Saibari lifted the ball over the onrushing Alisson Becker from outside the area following a lapse in communication between the Liverpool goalkeeper and his defenders, Gabriel and Marquinhos.

It was the first time the African champions had scored against South American opposition at the World Cup, having failed to do so against Peru in 1970 and Brazil in 1998.

Morocco continued to dominate and, by the 30th minute, had registered 12 shots – the most Brazil have faced in a World Cup match since their encounter with Mexico in 2018.

But as Mohamed Ouahbi’s side failed to capitalise on their advantage, Brazil drew level 13 minutes before the break through Vinicius.

Making his 50th appearance for the Selecao, he collected a ball from Bruno Guimaraes inside the area, cut inside, and unleashed a fierce strike past Yassine Bounou.

Former West Ham midfielder Lucas Paqueta almost put Brazil ahead in first-half stoppage time, but his acrobatic effort was tipped behind for a corner.

With several members of Brazil’s triumphant 2002 squad watching on in New Jersey – including Ronaldo, Kaka and Roberto Carlos – Carlo Ancelotti’s side began to move through the gears after the break.

And although chances were at a premium for both sides, Raphinha came closest to finding an elusive second when he narrowly failed to connect with Guimaraes’ low-driven cross across the face of goal.

The draw means Morocco’s wait to win their opening game at a World Cup goes on, while Brazil’s remarkable 92‑year unbeaten first-match record remains intact.

Brazil’s tying goal begins at 6:41.

Venus’ extraordinarily slow retrograde rotation was likely caused by a chance encounter with a moon-sized impactor. One that some 4.5 billion years ago likely slammed into our sister planet at a high angle and high velocity.

What if some black holes aren’t black holes at all? A new theoretical study suggests that when a massive star collapses, it might not form a singularity hidden behind an event horizon. Instead, the collapse could trigger the birth of a tiny new universe inside the dying star. Driven by dark energy, this miniature cosmos would expand and push back against gravity, preventing complete collapse and creating an exotic object known as a gravastar.

What if some black holes aren’t black holes at all? A new theoretical study suggests that when a massive star collapses, it might not form a singularity hidden behind an event horizon. Instead, the collapse could trigger the birth of a tiny new universe inside the dying star. Driven by dark energy, this miniature cosmos would expand and push back against gravity, preventing complete collapse and creating an exotic object known as a gravastar.

To paraphrase the famous movie line, if the EBM you followed brought you to this, of what use was the EBM?

The post The Men of Data and Science Who Enabled the Quackery of MAHA and the Scientific Sabotage of MAGA first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

It’s 2134, and humanity has finally embraced green technologies while ridding the Earth of harmful fossil-burning technologies, most notably gasoline, wood, coal, and oil. As a result, soot has been rendered obsolete, and all commercial products from soot, including shoes, wires, computer products, and eye products, are now produced from eco-friendly technologies. However, the uber-rich who still fancy non-eco-friendly products are willing to pay soot’s weight in gold for it. Therefore, the Exoplanet Research Corporation outfits its best ship to search for soot-enriched exoplanet atmospheres.

We have three cat-related items today, the first from the  Journal of Chemical Ecology. Click to read it, and after doing so you might consider giving your cats silver vine rather than catnip.

Silver vine (Actinidia polygama) grows in the mountainous areas of NE Asia, and has long been known as a cat attractant. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “A silver vine plant with the eponymous silver markings on its leaves.”

Qwert1234 at ja.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia says this about its effect on cats. (it has other medicinal and culinary uses for humans):

Silver vine has long been known to elicit euphoric response in cats.  The reaction to silver vine is similar to the response to catnip, but appears to be more intense. Silver vine is an alternative to catnip, and many cats that do not react to catnip will respond positively to silver vine powder made from dried fruit galls.  Typical behaviors include rolling, chin and cheek rubbing, drooling, and licking. The effect usually lasts between 5 and 30 minutes, but afterwards cats exhibit a refractory period lasting roughly an hour during which they are unresponsive to further dosage.

A study published in January 2021 suggests that felines are specifically attracted to the iridoids nepetalactol and nepetalactone, present in silver vine and catnip, respectively.  The compounds were found to repel mosquitos, and it is hypothesized that rubbing against the plants provides the cats with a chemical coat that protects them against mosquito bites.

That sounds weird but may be true: cats’ behavior may have evolved so that the moggy became attracted to the plant and rubs all over it: those cats who behave this way get fewer mosquito bites.  I suspect that’s wrong, though. Do cats get malaria or other reproduction-reducing maladies from mosquitoes?

Here’s a gif from Wikipedia of “A cat under the influence of Actinidia polygama“. It’s baked!

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Here’s the paper’s abstract:

Chemical cues that appear potent in controlled laboratory bioassays do not necessarily function as effective behavioural cues under natural conditions, where animals can freely approach or ignore stimuli. How chemical detectability translates into voluntary behavioural engagement, therefore, remains an important unresolved question. Plant-derived semiochemicals provide a tractable system for examining this issue because the same compounds can be presented either as intact natural sources or as purified chemicals. Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) show a characteristic self-anointing response to iridoid-producing plants, including catnip (Nepeta cataria) and silver vine (Actinidia polygama), both widely regarded as cat-attractants. Here, we tested whether these plants differ in their ability to induce voluntary engagement under free-choice conditions. Free-roaming cats rarely showed self-anointing behaviour (face-rubbing and rolling) toward intact catnip plants, but consistently engaged with silver vine. The same bias toward silver vine was observed in captive cats presented simultaneously with plant extracts. Chemical analyses confirmed that catnip contained abundant bioactive nepetalactone, indicating that weak responsiveness was not explained by a lack of bioactive compounds. These findings demonstrate that chemical abundance and laboratory bioactivity do not necessarily predict behavioural reliability under natural encounter conditions. Instead, whether a cue consistently elicits voluntary engagement may determine its ecological effectiveness as a behavioural cue.

But can you buy silvervine, and is it dangerous? The answer to the second question is a firm “no”; vets say it is safe and nontoxic. The only dangers are possible ingestion of chew sticks if you buy silvervine in that form, and some stomach upset if the cat ingests too much.  Here’s Grok’s summary:

Silvervine comes in safe forms like powder (from the fruit galls), sprays, toys, and the aforementioned sticks. Powder or sprays are often sprinkled on toys, beds, or scratching posts. Some products are designed for light ingestion.In short: Silvervine is one of the safest and most effective plant-based enrichments for cats. It’s widely recommended by vets as a catnip alternative with an excellent safety profile. If your cat has any pre-existing health conditions, it’s always wise to check with your veterinarian before introducing new toys or treats, but for the vast majority of healthy cats, it’s perfectly fine and enjoyable. As for buying it, Amazon has a gazillion silvervine items on its site, including sticks, powder, and toys. The sticks have another advantage over catnip: they clean the cat’s teeth when it’s chewing them. If you’ve used silver vine, report below, or try them out!

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The Good News Girl reports on something that cat cognoscenti have known for a long time: Disneyland is populated by over 200 feral cats recruited to keep the rodent populations down (not Mickey or Minnie, I hope!). Here’s her report, click to hear:

Here’s a longer but good video  (6-minutes) explaining the origin of the cats and their care (they get food and veterinary care, and are also trapped and neutered). Kittens or overly familiar cats get adopted out.

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Finally, in one Indiana city, at one time seven years ago, you could pay off parking tickets by giving the cops food for cats! I saw this on FB and decided to check it out:

Here’s a 2019 article from the Washington Post about the program, though my investigation showed that this program operated only in Indiana in 2019 and is no longer in practice. In some places, however, you can pay tickets by giving food for homeless people.

An excerpt:

There were too many kittens in the animal shelter, just as there had been last year and the year before that. Like other shelters that swell to capacity during cats’ annual breeding season, Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana was struggling this summer to meet the need.

“One day I was standing by the counter and somebody brought in six kittens,” said Officer Chase Winkle, a spokesman for the Muncie Police Department. “And before they could get those checked in, somebody came in with another four.”

To ease the pressure, police created a trade-off: For five days in July, people could pay for their parking tickets by donating to the shelter the equivalent value of cat food or litter. Residents who brought their donations to the police chief’s office with a receipt proving the value got their tickets wiped away. A police officer’s daughter works at the shelter and had made the department aware of the organization’s need.

Muncie is among cities across the country that are opting temporarily to accept charitable donations in lieu of monetary payments for parking infractions. From Anchorage, to Woodstock, Va., municipalities are writing off tickets in exchange for school supplies or cat litter — a way to fill a community need while lessening the sting of getting a ticket. Some cities offer a discount to people who pay with a donation, while choosing the donation option in other municipalities simply allows the payer to feel good.

In Muncie, about a dozen people made donations to pay for roughly $600 in parking tickets, Winkle said. Only offenses that didn’t pose a safety hazard counted: Donations couldn’t resolve a moving violation or a ticket for parking in a handicap spot. Most tickets that people paid with donations were worth about $25 each and had been issued for parking too long in a certain zone, Winkle said.

From the CNN article above:

What’s the cost of a parking ticket in Muncie, Indiana? For a few days in July, it was a cat food or supplies donation for a local animal shelter.

In an effort to help the Muncie Animal Care and Services Shelter, the Muncie Police Department asked violators to pay their parking tickets in cat food.

The request came after a couple of officers toured the shelter and found that it was running short on supplies to care for over 350 cats and kittens.

“If you have a $25 parking ticket, you can bring up to $25 worth of cat food or litter to the Clerk’s Office, and you can get your parking ticket to go away with the exchange of the donation,” Officer Jamie Brown said on a July 15 video shared by the police department on Facebook.

Although the offer ran only from July 15 to 19, the department quickly learned that people will do practically anything when little balls of fur are involved.

“This room was almost empty before we started! Most of the folks that donated didn’t even have parking tickets,” Muncie Police said in a tweet with a photo of all the donations.

. . .”I don’t know if the police department plans on doing this again, but we’re incredibly grateful to them and the community. Their response was overwhelming,” Ashley Honeycutt, the shelter’s office manager, told CNN.

I think they need to reinstate this program!

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Lagniappe: A famous cat in a riad (a fancy Moroccan house converted into a boutique hotel). Click on the screenshot to read more,. but I’ve put the whole text below:

A small riad in the Marrakech medina has built a wall display in its entry courtyard out of guest reviews. The reviews are not about the riad. They are about the cat, an orange tabby named Mishmish, who has been working the front gate for about six years.

The owner started noticing the pattern when his bookings began increasing for reasons he could not initially explain. He pulled the reviews.

A representative selection: “Mishmish was very professional.” “Mishmish escorted us to our room and approved.” “The location was good but Mishmish was the highlight of our trip.” “Mishmish let me cry in the courtyard for a long time and did not say anything.”

The owner printed his ten favorites, framed them in cheap wooden frames, and hung them on the wall above the reception desk. Mishmish now sits underneath the display like a portrait subject seated beneath his own gallery.

Booking inquiries now routinely ask whether he will be on duty during the guest’s stay.

If you want to stay at this place, here’s how to do it (from Grok):

Riad Julines is praised overall for its clean, charming traditional Moroccan decor, friendly staff (like hosts Raja/Raga and Daniel), excellent breakfast on the terrace, indoor pool/terrace, and peaceful vibe despite the central location. It’s a boutique-style guesthouse that feels like a home.If you’re planning a stay and love cats, this riad is a great match—many reviews note how the resident cats enhance the experience. You can find it on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, or by searching “Riad Julines Marrakech.” Note that cat policies can vary, so confirm directly with the riad if you have allergies or preferences. Here’s a booking.com link.

h/t: Reese

Did you find the two California toads in this morning’s photo? Here’s Robert Lang’s reveal:

Yesterday I planned a full day of reading and writing for a project I’m working on, but was interrupted three times for duckling rescues, so in terms of “professional” work, I got nothing done. In terms of waterfowl work, I—with the help of others—did rescue eight stranded ducklings who would otherwise have died.  I suppose that’s a fair trade-off, but I really hope these rescues end: they do save lives, but they’re hard on the mother ducks, the ducklings, and on me.  Here are the three rescues.

RESCUE 1.  Around 11 a.m. I saw on the PondCam that a person was standing in the “wildlife area” where nobody is supposed to be. I wandered down to the Pond and found a young man staring fixedly at a spot in the pond—and there was a young (1-3 days old) duckling, paddling along by itself.

The guy, whose name was Arjun Dhar, told me he had found it wandering in the quad and had put it in the pond, hoping that some female would adopt it. Well, that’s a nice thought, but it wouldn’t work for any number of reasons, one being that there were no hens with babies in the pond.  Arjun said that now he wanted to rescue it and take it home to raise. That, too, involves formidable difficulties, and it would be better to take it to rehab. I told him to wait there, keep her eye on the baby, and I’d be right back.

I quickly returned with two nets and a “duck box”, a small box lined with soft paper towels in which to sequester rescues.  It was not that hard to net the baby, and I drove Arjun with me to the rehab volunteer, who lives nearby. Here’s Arajun, showing off the duckling after we scooped it out of the pond. He himself had worked at Lincoln Park Zoo and kept a huge collection of reptiles in his home, including a monitor lizard and a python. I hope to see this fellow animal lover around the pond.

I cuddled it for a second before taking it to rehab:

Fortuitously, there were two other volunteers at the rehabber’s house—the very two who captured Vashti’s babies a few days before—making a run to Willowbrook with a load of injured or orphaned wildlife. The rehab woman put the duckling in a paper back and off it went.  The car was also carrying a bald eagle, who had been in a tree the night before when, during the fierce storms over Chicago, the tree was struck by lightning. The eagle was not in good shape and apparently had a wound in the eye. When I asked the drivers if it would survive, they said they didn’t know. Here’s the poor thing:

RESCUE 2, around 12:30.  Right when I returned from the rehab woman, I saw a knot of people around the channel in the Pond, looking at a narrow spot between two rows of rocks by the drain. In that channel was another orphan duckling, and so I had to get my net and procure it, too, with the help of a member of our Department who sometimes helps Team Duck.  This duckling was diving each time I went for it, surfacing at some random locality.  I knew I could get it if it stayed in the narrow gap between the rocks, and when it dived I gently swept the ground under the water. Sure enough, I came up with a thoroughly wet and thoroughly muddy duckling.  I took it up to my office, dried it off, put it on my chest to warm up, and then put it in another small duck box that I placed next to a space heater. The poor thing was traumatized and not too vigorous, and I was afraid it would die.  But it didn’t.  Here it is on my desk and then on my chest:

I am dishevelled and unshaven; the duck business takes a lot out of you. You can see it’s still wet, but it dried quickly with paper towels and heat (hypothermia is a danger):

When I was catching that duckling, a lady told me that there was an entire brood wandering around the Quad with its mom. I said that I couldn’t go roaming the entire Quad trying to find it, as I was harried. But eventually someone contacted me about it, which led to the next rescue.  Before I recount that one, I have a theory, which is mine.  Rescue #1 probably involved a duckling fron the Quad brood, as the woman who put it in the pond found it there. And rescue #2 may well have been the leftover duckling from Vashti’s brood. I was told that they had recovered seven, for seven had hatched, but I found out when I met the rehabbers earlier that they missed one and got only six. The wet, muddy duckling was, I suspect, the one that was left behind.

On to. . .

Rescue 3. I was settled in my office with the duckling in a box at my feet, getting plenty warm from the space heater. I wss about to get to work when suddenly I got an email from a grad student, time-stamped 2:09 pm.:

Dear Dr. Coyne, A mother duck is limping on campus. She has brought her ducklings to Cobb Hall. Sorry to bother you if this is not abnormal, but thought you would want to know in case it is. Thanks, Jenks IB Student

No phone number was given, so I emailed Jenks to call me, which he did immediately. This time there was a whole brood far from water.  The choices were to herd them to Botany Pond, where they’d be driven out by the aggressive drake still here, or capture the entire family for removal to a rehab facility or a distant pond.  I had never captured a hen before, so I equipped myself with two nets and two duck boxes, with a big one for mom. I knew that there was little chance of catching the hen, but I also knew that if left alone, the whole brood would die. I decided to do what I could to capture the family; and if I couldn’t get mom, I’d take the babies to rehab.

I went over to Cobb Hall and met Jenks and his girlfriend Niyati, who was keeping watch on the brood. You can see them below: mom and six babies, walking around in the bushes. The mother had a very slight limp, but she waddled like all ducks, and Jenks mistook some of that waddling for limping.

I watched them for a while, and decided to get the babies, who were peeping, and put them in a box, knowing that mom would stay near the peeping and hoping I could catch her with my big net:

Photo by Jenks and Niyati (I cropped it).

Two very short videos taken by Jenks Hehmeyer and Niyati Jain, who both turned out to be biology grad students. Lovely and helpful people.

The mother did go near the box, which I put in an interior corner of the building to make capturing her easier. I have to admit that I had no idea how to handle a full-grown hen, but a CBCM (Chicago Bird Collision Monitor) volunteer told me to put it in a big box and cover it with a towel.  I had a big box but no towel.

At any rate, capturing the mother was futile.  I would think I had her cornered, and she’d fly straight up and around me.  I must have tried four or five times, and each time the mother would get more freaked out and wouldn’t come too close to the box.  It wss hot, the ducklings in the box were peeping (the mother pecked my leg from behind when I was gathering them), so I decided to take them to rehab, too. The stress-out orphan was still in my office by the space heater, and, returning to the lab to add the singleton to the six, I was delighted to see that that duckling had perked up, had pooped, was peeping, and was much more vigorous. They were on their way to rehab:

Here is the box o’ ducklings from rescue #3 before I added the one from the second rescue to the batch. They were all in good shape and very vigorous.

So that was the last rescue. I made a final foray around the Pond to see if there were any ducklings left behind (the motto of Team Duck is “no duckling left behind”), and then drove the box of seven back to the rehab lady who lives nearby.

After that I washed off my nets and tidied up, and then, too tired to finish the Hili dialogues, I drove home. (I almost always walk home, but had the car because I had gone shopping the day before.. That made driving the babies to the rescue liaison lady much easier.)

The upshot, again: three rescues, eight babies caught. I do hope they do well at the rehab facility, which I think is the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center. I’m told the survivorship of orphaned ducklings there is over 90%—much higher than the survivorship of any of these ducklings, which would be zero.

I should be happy about this but I was psychologically debilitated. I am not a resilient person and always tend to look on the dark side, so the quacking of the bereft mother, the peeping of the babies, and the stress involved in trying to net orphan ducklings in the pond had taken its toll. I’m not asking for pity, but only recounting that three rescues in one day is stressful and fatiguing, aeven when those these three rescues were, physically, a piece of cake.

I went home, lay down on my bed and sometime later wandered to the kitchen to get dinner.  This morning I wandered down to the Pond again, fearful I’d find another orphan. There weren’t any, but there was the aggressive drake, whose wife, I think, is the second hen who produced a brood in the pond—a brood that disappeared on the same day it came down.  She flew down to the pond from the windowsill when I was feeding the drake, so I suspect that she, like Vashti, is re-nesting.  If so, that could be good, as the only ducks in the pond now are her aggressive drake and herself, so there’s nobody to go after a new brood. (Fingers crossed!)

Perhaps we’ll have a viable brood of ducklings after all.  If that is the case, we can expect to see it around July 10.  That’s still a good time for ducklings as it takes them only eight weeks to get to the fledging stage. Stay tuned!

Today we have another “spot the” feature from Robert Lang, whose commentary is indented below.  Spot the two frogs! There will be a reveal at 11 a.m. Chicago time.

The last two days on early-morning hikes, I’ve encountered literally dozens of tiny frogs hopping across the trail—so many that I had to watch my step to avoid them. Fortunately, on the light, sandy trail, they stand out pretty well, but once they get into the leaf litter on either side, they practically vanish. Today I brought my phone-camera on the hike, which means that it’s time for yet another “Spot the Froggies!”

My previous “Spot the Froggies” were California Tree Frogs (Pseudacris cadaverina), whose gray color made for perfect camouflage against streambed granite. I think these might be California Toads (Anaxyrus boreas halophilus)—I’ve seen full-size adults of the latter in this area, and I think I make out the beginnings of the white stripe running down the back of these subadults. I invite firm IDs from our herpetological expert fellow readers. These were taken along the Arroyo Seco, above JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] in Pasadena.

Here’s the “Spot-the” photo; there are two frogs in the picture (though it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more that I overlooked). Also attached is a close-up of one on my hand. (That’s his left leg extended, not a tadpole tail.)

Click to enlarge (I rate this “fairly easy”).  Please don’t reveal where they are in the comments, but you’re welcome to tell us if you found them, and how many you saw.

Again, reveal at 11 a.m. Chicago time.

Using the Keck Observatory, astronomers measured the spins of dozens of giant planets and brown dwarfs orbiting distant stars. They found that giant planets can spin faster than much more massive brown dwarfs, challenging simple assumptions about mass and rotation. The results suggest that magnetic fields and formation processes play a major role in determining how fast worlds end up spinning.

My, how the week has flown!  We had bad storms on Thursday—part of the tornado/storm system that hit the Midwest. Luckily we didn’t lose power, though I had to drive the wrong way down a one-way street on my way to work: a large tree had fallen, locking off the legal route.

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 13, shabbos for Jewish cats, and also National Golf Cart Day.  Here’s an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” with the irascible Larry David, showing the sequelae of his using the famous “drop and tug” strategy in golf.  As usual, David is in a golf cart when on the links.

 

It’s also International Drink Chenin Blanc Day (not bad advice), National Cupcake Lover’s Day (who is the person singled out here?), National Rosé Day (for wine), and World Gin Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 13 Wikipedia page.

There’s a Google Doodle today about the up-and-coming players on the U.S. World Cup team. Click the screenshot below to see what’s up:

Da Nooz:

*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal presents Part II of why proposed U.S. ceasefire agreements with Iran are “bad deals.”

This week saw multiple cases of the trope. On Sunday, we were supposedly so close to a deal that Trump demanded Israel take a direct Iranian attack on the cheek. Then, at the last moment, a U.S. helicopter was downed by Iranian fire, and the president declared they’d been “playing us for suckers.” Deal’s off.

What followed was a night of strikes, plans for another, even a declaration that “in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island.” Then, at the last moment—crash. “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved,” according to the White House, and Trump called off the strikes.

Charlie Brown isn’t the only one with a headache, and no one—except the Iranians—is laughing.

But much like the devil, the fate of this deal is in the details—and so far, the details look familiar. This MOU [Memorandum of Understanding]  appears nearly identical to the disastrous deal floated in late May, the one Trump abandoned after Republicans had an allergic reaction to it, while Iran reportedly concluded e was simply too desperate for a deal and they could wait him out.

Rather than a full agreement, what’s on the table is an MOU extending the ceasefire for 60 days while nuclear negotiations continue—and, despite the steep costs Israel recently paid to sever the two fronts, this one appears to fold Lebanon back in as well. On the nuclear file, the text lays out a framework for addressing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, though any actual action would wait on a second, more detailed accord.

Worse is the financial relief: according to the report, after reopening the strait, Iran would be given temporary sanctions waivers allowing it to sell oil for 60 days, generating precious revenue for Tehran. That relief would expand if Iran complies with the initial agreement and shows “good faith” in subsequent negotiations—though, as one diplomat put it, “there is no set date for sanctions relief, and it will be tied to the implementation of the deal.”

Less clear is what happens to the billions in Iranian funds frozen overseas. Iran has insisted it must receive some money immediately upon signing any initial deal, while the U.S. has said release would come in tranches based on compliance. Separately, the U.S., Iran and Qatar have reportedly discussed a mechanism letting Iran access some of its frozen funds in Qatar for humanitarian purchases. I’m not sure if Qatar is simply trying to make its terrorism support tax-deductible, but these payments are humanitarian in name only—just ask Hamas. Money is fungible, and the regime still controls imports, so it can either redirect funds from what little it gives its own population now that it is being covered by Qatar, or simply sell the humanitarian goods to its own population and pocket the revenue.

This deal can be judged by a simple test: does it merely pause the regime—leaving Iran roughly where it’s been since the blockade began—or does it rewind the clock, leaving Tehran better off than before? If sanctions are eased and frozen assets unlocked, it’s definitely the latter.

As one very senior Israeli official put it to me this morning, the deal is “shit.”

. . . The good news is that nothing’s locked in—the gaps between the parties remain huge—and given how fond Trump has grown of yanking the football away at the last second, maybe this time it’s the Ayatollah who ends up flat on his back.

Every day things go back and forth here, but if Trump is going to make a deal, it has to be one that allows him to claim that the U.S. “won”.  And now the negotiations are extended for another two months, so Trump can’t really claim he “won” until the end of August at the earliest—and that’s getting close to the midterms.

*This NYT op-ed is clickbait for me, though when you click on the screenshot, you’ll see that the title has changed—whoops, it changed back again. (Thearticle is archived here). But of course the “winning issue” turns out to be screwy: it’s DATA CENTERS, Jake!

An excerpt (article is archived here):

Americans hate data centers. They really, really hate them.

A Gallup poll from May found that 71 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built in their area. In rural communities in Utah and North Carolina, regular people are organizing to stop data center construction, speaking out at public hearings and pressuring politicians for bans. They are passionate enough to attend political education sessions about water rights, land use and thermodynamics. Cities like Tulsa, Okla.; Birmingham, Ala.; and New Orleans have recently passed temporary moratoriums on data center construction. Last week, lawmakers in New York passed a statewide pause on large-scale data centers; other states, including Maryland and Michigan, could be next.

According to polling by Heatmap News, more than half of all Americans support a national ban on data centers. The public seems to agree that data centers are giant, ugly, noisy, smelly altars to industrial-scale hostile architecture. In our virulently partisan country, this constitutes a rare show of consensus.

What Ms. Cottom doesn’t realize is that most Americans couldn’t even tell you what a data center is, that data centers are vitally important in today’s computer-infused world, and their impact could be minimized by putting them in remote areas. Yes, they have problems, but as far as I can see, we’re better off with them than without them. However, given the widespread ignorance about these matters, Cottom tells us Dems, “Hop on the issue pronto!”:

Democrats need organized voters. The political mobilization that the civil rights movement built and that has propelled Democrats to victories across the country is aging. The G.O.P. is racing to disorganize and dilute Black electoral power across the South and the Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Your guess about the Democratic Party’s plan to fill the gaps is as good as mine. The party seems to want some kind of economic populist message without embracing the demographic reality that a member of the working class is just as likely to be Black or a woman as a white dude in a Carhartt. Whether the data center resistance is a blip or a beginning of a new political imagination, it refutes the idea that you cannot have it all: populist energy, an economic message and a multiracial coalition that crosses class divides, in the South and beyond. Why aren’t Democrats jumping at the chance to get into the fight?

You know why. It’s not an important issue to most Americans, and data centers are not going to be pivotal in electing Democrats.

. . . . To win the future, Democrats have to survive the midterms. We have lived in Trump’s America for a decade now. Almost none of us are better off for it. The voters showing up to fight data centers demonstrate that a lot of us want something different. If the Democrats want to convince us that they are the party to get us there, they need a plan to rebuild institutions, rebalance the branches of power and restore faith in the system. They also need a national message equal to the righteous rage driving millions of Americans to look up from their enemy and finally see, instead, a neighbor and future worth fighting for. In the end, it’s simple.

We can win. That’s it. That’s the message.

There’s another message: Cotton has wasted 1,728 words conveying a message that, to me, is trivial and useless for winning elections. You be the judge.

*Yesrterday’s NYT’s morning newsletter announced that SpaceX was going public, and the sale of shares may make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: that is one thousand billion dollars. Here are the details:

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-building, satellite-launching and artificial intelligence company, is set to go public today at $135 a share. The company plans to sell 555 million of them. That means SpaceX would raise around $75 billion, putting its valuation at $1.77 trillion, the largest I.P.O. in history.

It could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Or it could tank. Some analysts have argued that SpaceX is significantly overvalued. The market could decide that Musk’s an overpromiser and pass on the stock’s high price. (Remember his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022? The company, now known as X, saw its ad revenue decline by 65 percent last year. Musk folded it into his A.I. company, xAI. Which is now part of SpaceX.)

“It really does feel very much a ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ situation,” one career investor told The Times.

Plenty of people will get rich anyway. One launch engineer who worked at the company for 12 years told The Times he’d earned more than 100,000 shares during his tenure. At $135 a pop, his SpaceX stock would be worth at least $13.5 million at some point today. Even if the price drops by half, he’d still have millions on paper. “The magnitude of this has been ridiculous,” he said.

Or look to Antonio Gracias, one of Musk’s staunchest friends and business allies. He and his private equity firm, Valor Equity Partners, have a $65 billion stake in SpaceX at its target I.P.O. valuation. If the stock soars, Gracias will instantly become one of the world’s richest human beings.

The NYT tells us what we should know before investing in SpaceX, though by now it’s a bit too late. Here’s how you can buy it—even if you don’t intend to.

When firms go public, they usually reserve a small sliver of their stock for individuals, with the bulk going to giant investors like asset managers and hedge funds.

SpaceX, however, sought commitments from individuals for up to 20 percent of its shares, much larger than a typical offering.

Some of those shares set aside for individual investors will be available under the SPCX ticker on online brokerage platforms like Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab and SoFi.

For anyone looking to buy SpaceX shares, the brokerages have said investors may not get the total number that they request, given a limited supply of stock at the initial offering price.

“Here, you ask for 1,000 shares — maybe you’ll get 300; maybe you’ll get 50,” said Jay Ritter, an I.P.O. expert at the University of Florida.

Individuals may find themselves owning SpaceX shares even if they didn’t actively choose to invest.

The Nasdaq-100, a popular index that tracks the top 100 nonfinancial companies listed on that exchange, recently relaxed its rules to make it easier and faster for SpaceX to be included. That will force funds that track the index to invest in SpaceX practically overnight.

When the stock starts trading on Friday, investors can buy the shares on the open market, but they probably won’t be able to purchase them at the I.P.O. price of $135 a share. The stock could open at a lower or higher price, depending on what type of demand the company’s bankers can muster up ahead of the first trade.

I ain’t buying any. One thing I’ve learned in investing (and I’ve been doing it for years, limiting myself largely to Vanguard mutual funds), is not to try to time the market, and not to buy individual stocks.  Following those rules has given me a comfortable retirement, and I ain’t about to change them now.

*Well, writing this on Friday afternoon, I see that Musk has indeed become the world’s first trillionaire, as SpaceX stock went sky-high. From the WSJ:

SpaceX’s shares rose about 30% over their opening price as the largest-ever IPO had Wall Street and investors around the world glued to their screens.

The stock opened trading at $150, 11% above the IPO price of $135. The initial climb gave it a market cap above $2.2 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable U.S.-listed company.

Elon Musk officially became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX—trading under the ticker SPCX— went public. His stake in the rocket maker was valued at around $690 billion at the IPO price, while his Tesla stake makes up around $279 billion of his net worth.

Lead banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will take home the biggest share of the IPO fees, getting a combined 40% or around $100 million apiece.

Some users reported issues with Robinhood’s platform in the half hour or so after shares of SpaceX started trading, with reports dropping off after noon.

Some skeptics think SpaceX’s sky-high valuation is much too high.

And here’s how the stock jumped (from the WSJ):

Non, je ne regrette riens.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “We economists have done the maths.”

→ Insane amounts of money are about to be made: With the SpaceX IPO, it’s estimated that more than 4,000 people are about to become millionaires, with 400 projected to have fortunes over $100 million. And then there’s the upcoming Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. Between space and LLMs, we’re looking at a new generation of wealth. And if I can climb back on my California soapbox for a moment, it’s always amazing to me that the East Coast produces none of this. The East Coast is the Europe of America. You go to New York when you decide it’s time to hire a dozen ADHD-identified individuals in Brooklyn who will sue you, not like, build stuff. For that, it’s all still the Bay Area or, thanks to SpaceX, Texas! And in the boom times, one group that’s thriving is (of course) prostitutes. Forbes has an amazing story about the nerdy escort boom. These ladies are charging upward of $2,000 an hour, even as much as $6,000 an hour—and you know they’re spending most of that hour talking about Moravec’s Paradox. One reports charging $23,000 a day. The absolute weirdest people in America have created artificial consciousness (probably Satanic) and despite all their efforts, they still exist in these pesky bodies that demand stupid things like [redacted], which the computer can’t quite do yet. Good for the prosties.

In other signs of new financial realities, women are hiring witches to help protect their weddings, or so Bloomberg tells us this week. Is it just me, or is heterosexuality getting weirder than being gay? Prostitutes and witches? Maybe you guys should take Pride this year, I think you need it.

→ Finally, data on how many girls were given testosterone: At the height of the movement to medically transition gender-dysphoric kids, it was always a little unclear how many kids were affected. Like, how riled up should we all get, really? Now we have data and a great write-up thanks to the brave journalist Benjamin Ryan. In Oregon, from 2016 to 2023, about 1 in 250 girls were taking testosterone by age 17. And that number was likely increasing every year in that time frame, so by 2023 it was probably a lot more than 1 in 250. That is objectively wild. That is a huge number of girls being put on testosterone, which alters them permanently, for life. Their voices, their bone structure. In retrospect, the reactions to this over the past few years were probably too muted! Here’s the chart Benjamin Ryan put together, based on a recent study of insurance data for 2016–2023:

Rarely do I look back on a moral panic and think, wow, we did exactly the right thing in response to it. Rarely do you say, it’s a good thing we panicked there or things could’ve gotten really bad! But in this case, it’s the truth. Doctors were drugging every gender-nonconforming girl they could get their paws on. Any girl going through puberty and feeling a little weird was offered. . . testosterone! An army of desexed girls was created. It’s really so dark. There is no way in hell I would have survived this maw. If I’d been born just a few years later, I would have been puberty-blocked and T’ed so fast, and then I’d never have children and have to shave my face forever. Equally terrible.

→ Now some good news: A number of pro-Hamas conspirators accused of haunting University of Michigan leaders have been indicted by a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors say the conspirators, who were “associated with the University of Michigan,” did things like throwing “glass jars filled with butyric acid and dye into the homes” of their targets. Here’s a nice little excerpt from our activists’ messages (you bet one was a medical student!):

These are cries for liberation, don’t you see! Sweet poetry for stolen lands. If you think there’s not medical torture happening right now by this guy’s fellow ideologues, you’re fooling yourself. Stay healthy out there! Don’t end up in an emergency room! If Bari ever does, I’ll just say goodbye at the door because we all know she ain’t comin’ out.

Meanwhile, the Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of Colorado Boulder issued a statement honoring a local terrorist for his murder of a local elderly Jewish woman. Remember the guy who firebombed that group who had gathered in honor of the Hamas hostages? That guy, who killed 82-year-old Karen Diamond and burned a bunch of other folks? “One year ago today, on June 1st, 2025, Mohamed Sabry Soliman took direct action against one manifestation of the Zionist death cult that we have allowed to fester in our city,” the student group posted, adding that the killer “chose the only sane response available to a rational human being.” Totally open blood lust. And to think, Colorado is so beautiful! They could be hiking and enjoying themselves, having a nice beer brewed right in town paired with some bison jerky and a burrito. Instead, they’re celebrating the death of an old Jewish woman. Odd.

They’re also celebrating the injuries sustained by more than a dozen other people in Soliman’s firebombing; see the NYT article here. And do look at the archived Students for Justice in Palestine site’s response to see how horrific that organization is.  Here’s a screenshot of part of it. Oy!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is hiding from Hili:

Szaron: I know you’re coming this way.
Hili: How do you know?
Sharon: The stones told me.

In Polish:

Szaron: Wiem, że tu idziesz.
Hili: Skąd wiesz?
Szaron: Kamienie mi powiedziały.

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

From Stacy:

From Addicted to Ducks, showing how they’re superior to chickens:

From Things With Faces: a horrifying and ghoulish yogurt:

I’ll give only two tweets today as yesterday I engaged in three duckling rescues yesterday (total of eight ducklings saved) and was busy much of the day. Photos follow, including one of a bald eagle taken to rehab (no, I did not find that one!).

Here is a video tweet from Masih showing a Taliban truck running over four women who dared to go to a seminar on education. For some reason they’ve made it un-embeddable, but if you click on the screenshot you’ll see it. (WARNING: women getting hit by a truck):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he got to Auschwitz. He was one year old, and would be 85 today had he lived. https://t.co/4a2MKehu2r

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 13, 2026

A bold claim that the universe’s accelerating expansion was an illusion has been put to the test—and failed. Researchers found that the study behind the controversy made key mistakes when analyzing supernova data. After revisiting the evidence, astronomers concluded that cosmic acceleration remains as strong as ever.

A bold claim that the universe’s accelerating expansion was an illusion has been put to the test—and failed. Researchers found that the study behind the controversy made key mistakes when analyzing supernova data. After revisiting the evidence, astronomers concluded that cosmic acceleration remains as strong as ever.

NASA-supported scientists have provided new information about how the early Earth may have acquired some elements necessary for the planet to become habitable. They also suggest a new role for Jupiter in the distribution of these elements throughout the young solar system. The study, published in Science Advances, examines this history by looking at the ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen in iron meteorites and in younger objects known as chondrites.