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AI finds a hidden stress signal inside routine CT scans
Forget Stardust - It Was Star-Ice All Along
Carl Sagan famously said that “We’re all made of star-stuff”. But he didn’t elaborate on how that actually happened. Yes, many of the molecules in our bodies could only have been created in massive supernovae explosions - hence the saying. Scientists have long thought they had the mechanism for how settled - the isotopes created in the supernovae flew here on tiny dust grains (stardust) that eventually accreted into Earth, and later into biological systems. However, a new paper from Martin Bizzarro and his co-authors at the University of Copenhagen upends that theory by showing that much of the material created in supernovae is captured in ice as it travels the interstellar medium. It also suggests that the Earth itself formed through the Pebble Accretion model rather than massive protoplanets slamming together.
Send in your holiday cat photos!
But this is a reminder to send in your photo of cats with a Christmas theme (or Hanukah theme, as we now have three Jewish cats. The instructions are here and we have only about ten photos. (Note: the cat below is AI generated; we don’t want those!)
Remember, one photo per submission, please!
Astronomers watched a sleeping neutron star roar back to life
Astronomers watched a sleeping neutron star roar back to life
Webb finds a hidden atmosphere on a molten super-Earth
Sunday: Hili dialogue
Welcome to sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, December 14, 2025, and National Bouillabaisse Day. It is very cold today: 2°F, which is -17°C. Your hands start freezing within 15 seconds of exposure (I forgot my gloves!).
Hanukkah starts tonight at sundown and ends on Monday, December 22. Here’s Gal Gadot and Noa Tishby, two of my heartthrobs, discussing the holiday:
Here’s a bowl of that fish soup from Wikipedia, with the caption, “A version by three-star Lyon chef Paul Bocuse from his restaurant ‘Le Sud’.” You can bet this will cost you some. . .
Arnaud 25, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
It’s also National Screwdriver Day (the drink), Monkey Day, Roast Chestnuts Day (where can I find them?), and National Biscuits and Gravy Day, a great indigenous American food.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Two shootings occurred yesterday: one at Brown University killed two people and injured nine, and at last ten people were killed by snipers on Bondi Beach, Australia, during a Jewish celebration; it appears to be a targeted attack. More in tomorrow’s Nooz. Things are horrible everywhere.
*The government closed because Congress could not agree on whether to extend Obamacare subsidies. Now that Congress is back in session, it’s clear that this doesn’t mean a compromise is in the works. The Senate has rejected both Democratic and Republican plans, guaranteeing that premiums will go up at the end of the month, and presages yet another government closure in 2026.
The Senate rejected dueling health care bills Thursday, all but guaranteeing that Obamacare subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans will lapse at the end of the year.
Senators voted 51-48 on advancing a GOP health care plan that would have expanded health savings accounts as an alternative to the expiring tax credits. Democrats’ plan to extend the Covid-era enhanced subsidies for three years also received a 51-48 vote. Both proposals fell well short of the 60 votes needed to vault a key procedural hurdle.
The votes both went largely, but not entirely, along party lines. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to oppose the GOP plan. Meanwhile, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted to advance the Democrats’ health care plan. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who would have voted for the GOP plan, missed the votes.
. . . Thursday’s Senate votes were part of a deal Senate Majority Leader John Thune made with Democrats to end the government shutdown that ended last month. Senators have widely acknowledged for weeks that the votes were aimed more at messaging than forcing through passable bipartisan compromise.
Still, a deal in the Senate was likely Congress’ best shot at preventing the subsidies from lapsing and raising premiums for many Americans who buy their insurance directly through Affordable Care Act exchanges. While the lapse will not completely eliminate the tax credits, they will revert back to pre-pandemic levels and many families could still see their premiums rise by $1,000 a year or more.
If you look at how much people’s healthcare premiums will go up if a bill doesn’t pass, a fair estimate would be a doubling of the monthly rate, but for some people it will be much more—perhaps fourfold. It’s not right to play hob with people’s health for political gain, but it looks as if a compromise is not in the works.
*Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan celebrates “Ten years of marriage equality“: the right of gays to marry which, a great moral advance, Sullivan largely helped to forge. He assesses what the movement gained and what it lost.
And then, of course, we’ve had ten years of nationwide marriage equality since 2015’s Obergefell decision — a cause I imagined, helped kick-start in 1989, and spent a quarter century arguing everywhere I could. It included my own civil marriage and, in true American fashion, my sad but amicable divorce more than a decade later.
“If you live long enough” is a cliché for a reason. And, against the odds, thanks to protease inhibitors, I did live long enough to see these two evolutions in media and society unfold. “Did they do more good than harm?” is a question I’ve found myself pondering in my third trimester of life. The media revolution? A truly mixed bag, I’d say, especially in the iPhone and now AI era. A story for another time.
But gay marriage? Personally, I feel I failed in my own journey, but nonetheless tried hard, and treasure the enduring love and deep friendship I still have with my ex-husband. My marriage helped me mature, grounded me more firmly, taught me what sacrifice and generosity can be. Maybe it will happen again.
And collectively? A much higher grade surely — with the caveat that we’ve only had a decade of evidence. My opponents feared it would destabilize marriage more generally. It didn’t. Marriage rates were 6.9 per 1,000 in 2015 and 6.1 today — a decline in line with the previous half-century. Not great, but there’s no sign that gay marriage had any serious impact. Divorce rates? They have actually improved since 2015: from 3.1 to 2.4 per 1,000 in 2023.One small contributing factor is that divorce rates among gay men are actually lower than that for straight couples. Who predicted that? Certainly not Bill Kristol.
How has marriage affected these gay men and lesbians? It’s been a boon. Married couples have higher household incomes, lower poverty rates, higher levels of employment, better health than unmarried ones, higher home-ownership rates — and report greater social acceptance. Gay men have been thriving in education. . .
. . . . The queer activists, of course, loudly insisted that same-sex couples rejected the institution of marriage and would never join it. But the number of married gay men and lesbians more than doubled from 390,000 in 2015 to 823,000 now; and nearly 60 percent of same-sex cohabiting couples are now married, compared with 40 percent in domestic partnerships.How has this reform been greeted in the country at large? Gallup shows that support has grown from 58 to 69 percent. In 2024, the GOP removed opposition to gay marriage in its platform. A married gay man with two sons is now the Treasury Secretary in a hard-right Republican administration — a more senior position than any openly gay Dem has ever held.
As social reforms go, it’s hard to do better than this. It sure hasn’t been a panacea for marriage as a whole, but it has shored up the thing a bit and broadened its base. And then there are things for which there are no statistics. The young mercifully don’t know much of the immense psychic pain, deep spiritual anguish, emotional trauma, and intense self-hatred that the past contained for so many of us — a pain far worse for the countless generations before.
And the downside, involving the alphabet characterization:
The trouble, of course, is that success breeds its own set of problems. Successful civil rights movements — think of the mid-1960s — can radicalize and curdle. And as most normie gays got on with their lives, queer extremists duly took over the gay infrastructure and institutions, and the era of more general woke madness set in.
The goal was to re-marginalize us as “queer” again, to indoctrinate kids with leftist lies about human biology, and create an entirely fake history of gay and lesbian rights. Dissent was punished, old leaders ousted, and an ever-expanding alphabet of ever-more bizarre and niche identities — often approaching mental illness — replaced any idea of gay and lesbian identity.
They changed the flag and merged its colors with the BLM movement; they pioneered untested medical experiments on pre-pubescent children with gender dysphoria, including gay and lesbian kids; they sterilized them and rendered many incapable of orgasm for life; they perverted the English language — “chest-feeding” anyone? — and tried to abolish the whole idea of homosexuality as a distinct human experience, in favor of their generalized, post-modern, intersectional queerness. And they replaced the principles of live-and-let-live by forcing others to take the knee to their radicalism. No-enemies-to-the-left syndrome became a pandemic. Sore winners.
. . . I remain deeply proud of what we did. Nothing will ever take that away. The current madness is based on lies about human nature, and lies always fail in the end. We will emerge from it because it’s built on sand. Meanwhile, you carry on, hoping some kind of moderation will happen, but seeing no sign of it at all. I realize don’t belong in this intolerant “LGBTQIA+” community any more. And it doesn’t want me or any gay men like me. The price of success is always failure, I suppose. But the success was real.’
Well, I apologize for the long excerpt, but Sullivan is an eloquent exponent of the unpredicted attacks on gays by the whole “intolerant “LGBTQIA+” community.” Still, he did well in life. No matter how much I disagree with Sullivan over things (increasingly it’s limited to religion as he moves towards the center), I could never hope to have improved the well-being of society as much as he did by promoting gay marriage. And that will not go away.
*After several years of calling Israel genocidal while keeping silent on Hamas, Amnesty International finally admitted that Hamas committed crimes against humanity (h/t Stephen). It’s a measure of the degree of anti-semitism that this happened only this week. Amnesty International, like Doctors Without Borders (DwB) or even the UN itself, has a horrible record of persistently criticizing Israel and ignoring Hamas, though it did accuse Hamas once of committing “war crimes”, ignoring the humanitarian crimes.
Amnesty International on Thursday accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of crimes against humanity, including extermination, during and after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
“Palestinian armed groups committed violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity during their attacks in southern Israel that started on 7 October 2023,” the human rights watchdog said in a 173-page report.
The group has previously accused Hamas and others of committing war crimes.
War crimes are serious violations of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict. Crimes against humanity can occur in peacetime and include torture, rape and discrimination, be it racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender-based. They involve “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”
Amnesty has also accused Israel of genocide, an accusation that Jerusalem vehemently denies. However, Amnesty said any Israeli wrongdoing, or Palestinian groups’ crimes against other Palestinians, were outside the scope of this report.
Amnesty said that the mass killing of civilians in Israel on October 7 amounted “to the crime against humanity of extermination.” Among the other crimes listed were murder, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and sexual violence.
Hamas rejected the report, saying it contained “inaccuracies and contradictions.”
Israel also critiqued the report, noting that it came out more than two years after the attack, with the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, saying it “falls fa
Crikey! They did not even condemn Hamas for the October 7, 2023 massacre of civilians as well as kidnapping. What has happened to organizations like Amnesty International and DwB? How did they lose their moral compass?
*The NYT reports that the CIA enlisted a team of climbers in 1965 to put a plutonium-generated device on the top of the famous Himalayan peak Nanda Devi, designed to spy on China. There’s a lot of plutonium in it, but it was abandoned and never used. It’s still spewing radioactivity somewhere on the peak:
The mission demanded the utmost secrecy.
A team of American climbers, handpicked by the C.I.A. for their mountaineering skills — and their willingness to keep their mouths shut — were fighting their way up one of the highest mountains in the Himalayas.
Step by step, they trudged up the razor-toothed ridge, the wind slamming their faces, their crampons clinging precariously to the ice. One misplaced foot, one careless slip, and it was a 2,000-foot drop, straight down.
Just below the peak, the Americans and their Indian comrades got everything ready: the antenna, the cables and, most crucially, the SNAP-19C, a portable generator designed in a top-secret lab and powered by radioactive fuel, similar to the ones used for deep sea and outer space exploration.The plan was to spy on China, which had just detonated an atomic bomb. Stunned, the C.I.A. dispatched the climbers to set up all this gear — including the 50-pound, beach-ball-size nuclear device — on the roof of the world to eavesdrop on Chinese mission control.
But right as the climbers were about to push for the summit, the weather went haywire. The wind howled, the clouds descended, a blizzard swept in and the top of the forbidding mountain, called Nanda Devi, suddenly disappeared in a whiteout.
From his perch at advance base camp, Capt. M.S. Kohli, the highest-ranking Indian on the mission, watched in panic.
“Camp Four, this is Advance Base. Can you hear me?” he recalled shouting into a walkie-talkie.
No response.
“Camp Four, are you there?”
Finally, the radio crackled to life with a faint voice, a whisper through the wash of static.
“Yes … this … is … Camp … Four.”
“Come back quickly,” Captain Kohli remembered ordering them. “Don’t waste a single minute.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Then Captain Kohli made a fateful decision. He needed to, he said — to save the climbers’ lives.
“Secure the equipment. Don’t bring it down.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The climbers scampered down the mountain after stashing the C.I.A. gear on a ledge of ice, abandoning a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb.
It hasn’t been seen since.
And that was 1965.
Every mountain-lover knows of Nanda Devi, India’s second highest mountain at a height of 7817 m (25,646 ft). It was notoriously hard to climb, and infamous for being the mountain that killed 22-year-old Nanda Devi Unsoeld, the daughter of Willi Unsoeld, who conquered Everest via its West Ridge in 1963 and named his daughter after Nanda Devi.
From 1965 to 1968, attempts were made by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in co-operation with the Intelligence Bureau (IB), to place a nuclear-powered (SNAP-19C RTG) telemetry relay listening device on the summit of Nanda Devi.This device was designed to intercept telemetry signals from missile test launches conducted in the Xinjiang Province, at a time of relative infancy in China’s missile program. The expedition retreated due to dangerous weather conditions, leaving the device near the summit of Nanda Devi. They returned the next spring to search for the device, which ended without success. As a result of this activity by the CIA, the Sanctuary was closed to foreign expeditions throughout much of the 1960s. In 1974 the Sanctuary re-opened.
But now, because Nanda Devi has religious significance, nobody of any stripe is allowed to climb it. If the device ever turns up, it will be inside a glacier, and that is unlikely to be found given the new restrictions.
Sumod K Mohan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
*Amherst College has to get the prize for the most bizarre student orientation of 2025. Luana sent me this article (yes, from the Washington Free Beacon) of the stuff that transpires when first-year Amherst students are indoctrinated oriented.
Amherst College was founded over two centuries ago to prepare young Christian men for the ministry. Today, however, the prestigious college has become a hotbed of administratively sanctioned sex performances and “sexual skills” programs, with a focus on “queer” and transgender students and on free-sex practices such as polyamory. The graphic nature of school-sanctioned sex events has made many current Amherst students deeply uncomfortable, according to students who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
Amherst, in central Massachusetts, is one of the country’s most exclusive small liberal arts colleges. The acceptance rate for the class of 2029 was 7 percent and annual tuition plus room and board exceeds $93,000, making it the sixth-most expensive college in the country.
Every year, first-year students are instructed, as a part of orientation, to attend an event—dubbed “Voices of the Class”—in which they are familiarized with Amherst’s “code of conduct” through a theatrical performance scripted using out-of-context excerpts from their own admissions essays. An entire section of the performance is dedicated just to sex.
The event takes place in Johnson Chapel, which Amherst calls its “most important building,” and is used for worship services, convocations, senior assemblies, and other significant gatherings. Johnson Chapel displays 36 portraits of the college’s most notable figures and alumni—including all 19 former presidents of the college, influential trustees, clergymen, civil rights leaders, poet Emily Dickinson, and former U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, who all likely would have looked on in horror if they saw the event on August 31st, 2025.
On the chapel’s chancel, students performed mock sex acts including oral sex, masturbation, and group sex. A young woman bent over while another student pretended to penetrate her from behind. Others pretended to do drugs and shared their “high thoughts.”
Every first-year was urged to attend the performance by their orientation leader. The administration advertises the event as a “lighthearted tradition” to “celebrate the humor, creativity, and individuality of your class.” The school funds the performance, and Amherst administrators work closely with the student performers, offering feedback and approving the script.
. . . . Following the event, the Office of Student Affairs asserted in an email that “Voices of the Class” is “not graphic.”
Um. . . .
Niemi, who’s from Idaho, describes the skits as simulated sex, with students moaning and thrusting under a blanket, and says that the peer educators “showered handfuls of condoms on students like confetti.”
“I thought about leaving 10 minutes in. I’m not someone who breaks rules or skips mandatory events, but it was disgusting enough it almost forced me to leave,” Niemi recalled.
But Amanda Vann, Amherst’s “director of health and wellbeing education,” told the Free Beacon that the skits help students build up their skills when it comes to sex. “The skits are part of our broader commitment to promoting wellbeing and sexual respect on campus,” she said
Right. The script is written by juniors and seniors taking excerpts from admissions essays written by first-year students (or maybe those who didn’t get in as well). Here are two videos of the event:
I don’t consider myself a prude, but I just don’t get this.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are again discussing Andrzej:
Hili: He’s not paying any attention to us at all.
Szaron: All we can do is pretend we don’t care.
In Polish:
Hili: On w ogóle nie zwraca na nas uwagi.
Szaron: Możemy tylko udawać, że nas to nie obchodzi.
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From The Dodo (click to enlarge). DO NOT FEED BEA A MUFFIN! (And read it if you can.)
From Give me a Sign; notice that all ursids are prohibited in the sixth bullet point for having bear feet:
From Stacy; a great wrestling match:
From Masih, another brave Iranian woman, singing without a hijab, breaking two rules. She did this in Iran, I think, and had been arrested for it, but released in the face of national outrage.
The translation:
The virtual concert by Parastoo Ahmadi, which impacted millions of Iranians inside and outside Iran and, despite the danger, prompted many Iranians to visualize and break out of the dictatorship’s bubble. This courageous move by Parastoo is a stand and a fight against the Islamic Republic. Everyone should take a step in their own way and challenge the Islamic Republic until the day all the pieces of the puzzle come together and the Islamic Republic is forever removed from Iran and Iranians. If male singers inside Iran stand alongside brave women like Parastoo, Zara, and the young rappers who are currently fighting for their natural rights these days, they will reduce the cost of the struggle for female singers. #بدون_زنان_هرگز
كنسرت مجازى پرستو احمدى كه ميليونها ايرانى را در داخل و خارج از ايران تحت تاثير قرار داد و با وجود خطر ، افكار بسيارى از ايرانيان را وادار به تصويرسازى و خروج از حباب ديكتاتورى كرد.
اين حركت شجاعانه پرستو، ايستادگی و مبارزه عليه جمهورى اسلامىست. هركس به سهم خود قدمى بردارد و… pic.twitter.com/Vx7Vzhu7i1
— United Against Gender Apartheid (@UAGApartheid) December 13, 2025
Larry the Cat presents a poor, frustrated kitty:
Happy #Caturdaypic.twitter.com/hRoijzSBWs
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) December 13, 2025
From Malcolm; I’m sure they don’t make these any more:
The Motocompo: Honda’s 1980s foldable scooter that fits in a city car.pic.twitter.com/o4HMajt8ES
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 21, 2025
From Simon, who asks, “Who even lets them drive?”
GWAS pic.twitter.com/OuDcNbeTdy
— Oded Rechavi (@OdedRechavi) December 12, 2025
One from my feed. Crows are not dumb!
Taking the leaves off strawberriespic.twitter.com/HehaSJ1zMn
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 13, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was seven years old and would be 89 today had he lived. https://t.co/iRkNe4jCO5
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 14, 2025
. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, a headline you don’t see every day:
We don’t do court reports, especially when it comes to violent crime, but there’s always an exception.
— Angry People in Local Newspapers (@apiln.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T14:30:20.280Z
Second, the late ecologist Sir Bob May takes issue with how this famous story is related:
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of the distinguished British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who found himself in the company of a group of theologians. On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”
Looking into a paper about beetles reminds me of Bob May's firm riposte to his account in Nature about God's famous inordinate fondness for beetles.
— Roland Pease (@peaseroland.bsky.social) 2025-12-08T15:35:15.535Z
Is the Big Bang a Myth? Part 3: The Splitting of the Forces
The early universe was a very different place than today. And by “early” I don’t mean a billion or even ten billion years ago. The universe is about 13.77 billion years old, and when it was only a handful of seconds old, it was completely unrecognizable.
New quantum antenna reveals a hidden terahertz world
A clear new material could make windows super efficient
Recent Surveys Reveal Dwarf Galaxies May Not Contain Supermassive Black Holes
A new study, analyzing over 1,600 galaxies observed with Chandra over two decades, suggests that smaller galaxies do not contain supermassive black holes nearly as often as larger galaxies do.
Caturday felid trifecta: The cats of Disneyland; a new cat book; Nimbus the Summit Cat; and 3 (count them, three) items of lagniappe
From Inside the Magic comes a story I’ve known for a while—but you might not. It’s about the feral cats that roam the original Disneyland at night, taking care of the rodent problem. Click below to see the story; excerpts are indented:
Excerpts:
It’s no news that Disney parks hide some special park features in plain sight, like the hidden suite in Cinderella Castle, Walt Disney’s apartment at Magic Kingdom in Disneyland Park, and the private members-only Club 33, also located in Disneyland Park.
However, Disneyland Resort in California focuses much of its attention on a “secret attraction” in Disney park 24/7, and they manage to hide it in plain sight. [JAC: Disneyland Resort comprises two parks, one of them the original Disneyland, which I went to once as a child.]
To be more exact, around 200 of these “secret attractions.” Yes, you read it right — There are about 200 feral cats at Disneyland! The adorable feral cat colony lives in the happiest place on earth.
. . . . There have been sightings going as far as 1955, soon after Disneyland opened.
The story goes: When Walt Disney decided that there should be an attraction inside the Sleeping Beauty Castle — what we know today as the Castle Walkthrough attraction — he brought engineers into the castle to begin the planning. But to his surprise, he was greeted by a feral cat colony that had made the court their home.
But the cats had brought a huge problem — an infestation of fleas. Walt Disney knew he couldn’t just get rid of the cats without sparking public uproar, so he adopted each cat and made them all Cast Members. By doing so, the problem seemed to be solved in the best possible way.
Unfortunately, things weren’t that simple. Due to the theme park’s rustic design, Disneyland had ironically brought unwelcomed guests to the park — rodents.
For Walt’s luck, not all feral cats had set home in the castle but other places around the park property. Those cats found their wonderland inside the park with a good source of food — the rodent population — plus, the park was a place free of the typical dangers that a stray cat faces. They would come out at night and hunt inside the park in peace.
Someone at the Disney company had a brilliant idea; allow the cats to live in the park. By nature, feral cats are scared of humans. Therefore they wouldn’t bother the park’s guests, and apparently, they were doing a better job at pest control than human exterminators.
The idea worked so well that the cat population at Disneyland still exists with over 200 felines! The kittens received a forever home at the happiest place on earth, and the theme park guests are always surprised and glad to spot one of the felines around the park. So, next time you are at Disneyland, keep an eye out for some whiskers, bushy fur tails, and significant cuteness.
Note that these aren’t really feral cats, as the park takes care of them and adopts some out.After deciding to keep the cats, the Disney Company established protocols and ways to keep the cats and guests safe. Disney placed feeding stations around the property, the cats were all spayed/neutered, vaccinated the entire feral population, and Circle D Ranch Cast Members were assigned to care for the furry batch of Disneyland Cast Members. The cats a very well taken care of at Disneyland!
Mostly, the cats stay hidden during the day and roam around at night. But not all cats follow that rule. Park guests often spot the feral cats sleeping around the park or wandering around the park property during the day. For that reason, and as a general rule, Disney does not encourage guests to try to get too close or even pet the cats. They are better off remaining solitary and admired from a distance. But, by all means, take some pictures!
If, by any chance, a Disneyland cat starts getting too comfortable around park guests, Disney adopts the feline out to a Disney cast member. The same goes for any new litter of kittens accidentally born within any Disney property. So, please don’t encourage the cats to lose their permanent home inside the happiest place on earth.
If any of the Disneyland cats start to get too friendly around the park’s guests, or if a new cat litter is born, Disney decides to put them up for adoption to a Disney employee — So they are always part of the Disney family.
I knew that any company that makes its living by extolling animals would take care of cats this way! Has any reader who’s been to the original Disneyland seen these cats?
And here’s a video showing them, including Walt himself, holding stroking an orange moggy:
*********************
The other day I got an unexpected package in the mail, and, opening it up, I found a wonderful picture book, large and full of glossy photos of domestic cats (both moggies and purebreds) as well as wild cats like tigers and lions. It’s published by Abrams Books, where the hardcover goes for $70 (only $49 at Amazon); the fantastic photos were taken by Tim Flach, and the text is by evolutionary biologist and ailurophile Jon Losos. I figured out quickly that, because I reviewed Jon’s book The Cat’s Meow in the Washington Post, and favorably (I called it “the definitive book on the biology, ecology and evolution of the house cat{“). Jon had the book sent to me. I was right: Jon told me, “The publisher asked for suggestions about whom to send it to, and you immediately came to mind.”
I was delighted, and sent the photo below to Jon that day.
Flach, a British photographer specializing in animals, does spectacular work here’s a video he produced about the book:
View this post on InstagramOne of Flach’s photos from the book, somewhat degraded as I took it with an iPhone. But even so it’s mesmerizing.
Here’s an eight-minute video aired on CBS about Flach and his photos of cats (and other creatures):
This book would make a great Christmas present for ailurophiles, and you can get it for less than fifty bucks on Amazon. Have a look!
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Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire has some of the worst weather in the United States. Located atop the eponymous 6,288-foot mountain, it has human residents who stay for a week at a time, but also a cat, Nimbus, who’s a permanent resident. The Observatory is a private, nonprofit organization aimed at producing scientific data, and Wikipedia says this:
The U.S. Signal Service, a predecessor to the Weather Bureau, occupied the summit and kept records from 1870 to 1892. Starting in 1932, the current observatory began keeping records. On April 12, 1934, the observatory staff recorded a wind gust of 231 mph that at the time was the highest recorded wind speed in the world, a record that was held until 1996. [JAC: the new record was set in 1996 “at Barrow Island, Australia during Typhoon Olivia. According to the report, the new record stands at 253 mph.”] The observatory’s weather data have accumulated into a valuable climate record since. Temperature and humidity readings have been collected using a sling psychrometer, a simple device containing two mercury thermometers. Where most unstaffed weather stations have undergone technology upgrades, consistent use of the sling psychrometer has helped provide scientific precision to the Mount Washington climate record.
The observatory makes prominent use of the slogan “Home of the World’s Worst Weather”, a claim that originated with a 1940 article by Charles Brooks (the man generally given the majority of credit for creating the Mount Washington Observatory), titled “The Worst Weather In the World” (even though the article concluded that Mt. Washington most likely did not have the world’s worst weather). The Sherman Adams summit building, named for the 67th Governor of New Hampshire, houses the observatory; it is closed to the public during the winter and hikers are not allowed inside the building except for emergencies and pre-arranged guided tours.
It’s dire up there in winter; here’s a photo from 2004:
User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The observatory has a page on “History of cats on the mountain,” showing that they go back to the 1930s, and there has been one ever since I can remember. The current resident, Nimbus (formerly “Greg”) came from The Conway Area Humane Society, and while he goes out in summer, he’s always well taken care of and well fed. You can read “20 FAQs about Nimbus, the Summit Cat“, and here’s an excerpt (Nimbus wrote it himself):
10. What does Nimbus like to do all day?
When I am not outside, I enjoy begging for treats from the Observers and taking naps on the couch or on someone’s lap. At night, I like to hunt for mice and I take that role very seriously; after all, it is my purrsonal responsibility to keep the rodent population in check.
11. What is Nimbus’ personality like?
I consider myself a sociable cat and I like to use meows, chatters, and purrs to get the attention of staff members and visitors.
12. Does Nimbus live at the summit year round?
Besides my occasional routine visit to the doctor, I do live at the mountain year round. When I do take a trip down to the valley, though, I always forget how there is 20% more oxygen at the base of the mountain than at the summit.
13. Does Nimbus like the winter season at the summit?
I am less than thrilled when the weather turns colder, snowier, and windier at Mount Washington in the winter. So, most days, the observers will find me enjoying the warmth of our living quarters. Sometimes, I’ll even lay directly on the heater in the living quarters when I am not warm enough.
Here’s Jen, the “Good News Girl,” narrating some video and facts about the Summit Cat:
And an Instagram post from the Observatory showing all the cold-weather gear that Nimbus has acquired. I seriously doubt, though, whether he ever dons this stuff. But look at his booties!
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Lagniappe 1: Larry the Cat in a photobomb
Lagniappe 2: Cat vs. d*g (cat wins!)
Lagniappe 3: Cat vs. snow. Click on the picture to go to the video:
h/t: Andrew, Phil
Send in your Christmas cat photos
But this is a reminder to send in your photo of cats with a Christmas theme. The instructions are here and we have only about eight photos. (Note: the cat below is AI generated; we don’t want those!)
Readers’ wildlife photos
This is the second part of a batch of photos sent in by Neil K. Dawe from Vancouver Island, British Columbia. (His first batch, showing a visit to Darwin’s Down House is here.) Neil’s captions are indented and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
The Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica) is a fairly common species in Britain. It was formerly considered conspecific with the Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia) of North America and many authorities still consider them the same species. The magpie belongs to the corvid family, a group of some of the smartest birds including crows, ravens, and jays. The magpie is one of the few animals that is known to have self-awareness: an individual can pass the mirror test, recognizing itself in its mirrored reflection. Here’s a link to Ian Tyson’s descriptive song about this “pretty bird”:
The Eurasian Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) is another member of the corvid family, a common species throughout most of Britain. Jackdaw means “small crow”:
The Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) is common at feeders and was a familiar bird everywhere we went in Britain. It is known for its habit, first observed in the 1920s, of pecking through milk-bottle tops to sip the cream. Other blue tits quickly learned this behaviour through observation and by the 1950s most of Britain’s Eurasian Blue Tit population had learned this behaviour. However, with the advent of supermarkets and the stopping of doorstep milk delivery the habit has since died out. Interestingly, some European Robins (Erithacus rubecula) also acquired this behaviour but it never spread to the entire robin population as it did with the blue tits.
Blue Tit
The Great Tit (Parus major) was a common bird in most of the places we visited on our travels. Since spring temperatures have been increasing due to climate heating, a mismatch has occurred between the hatching of nestling tits and the peak caterpillar hatch, an important food for nestlings. This has caused a selection for earlier Great Tit egg-laying dates by up to 11 days and a shortening of the fledging period by 3–4 days. Second broods are also now more common:
The European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) gave its name to the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) whose reddish breast reminded early European Settlers of this familiar European bird:
The Dunnock (Prunella modularis), nicknamed the “hedge sparrow” has cooperative nesting behaviour, most often in the form of polyandry with two males and a female tending the nest and young. Polygyny has been reported to a lesser extent:
In Britain, males of the Common Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) tend to overwinter near their breeding areas while the females migrate further south, hence the male nickname “bachelor finch”:
The European Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) is a favourite cagebird in parts of its range. One study found it to be extinct or very scarce in the wild in much of Algeria and Tunisia but estimated a captive population of 15.6 million across the entire western Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). The practice of catching and keeping caged migratory birds is no longer allowed in Britain:
Is the Big Bang a Myth? Part 2: The Primaeval Atom
In the early 20th century, after years of effort, Albert Einstein developed his general theory of relativity. This was a massive improvement in our understanding of gravity, giving us a sophisticated view into the inner workings of that fundamental force.
Why Old Moon Dust Looks So Different from the Fresh Stuff
Tracking down resources on the Moon is a critical process if humanity decides to settle there permanently. However, some of our best resources to do that currently are orbiting satellites who use various wavelengths to scan the Moon and determine what the local environment is made out of. One potential confounding factor in those scans is “space weathering” - i.e. how the lunar surface might change based on bombardment from both the solar wind and micrometeroid impacts. A new paper from a researchers at the Southwest Research Institute adds further context to how to interpret ultra-violet data from one of the most prolific of the resource assessment satellites - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - and unfortunately, the conclusion they draw is that, for some resources such as titanium, their presence might be entirely obscured by the presence of “old” regolith.
Measuring Radio Leaks from 36,000 Kilometres Up
Radio astronomers hunting for the faint whispers of the early universe face an unexpected threat from above: satellites designed to be silent are leaking radio noise into space. New research using the Murchison Widefield Array has set the first limits on unintended radio emissions from distant geostationary satellites, revealing that most remain mercifully quiet in the frequency range crucial for next-generation telescopes. The findings offer cautious hope that the Square Kilometre Array, set to become the world's most sensitive radio telescope, might avoid the radio pollution crisis now plaguing observations of low Earth orbit satellites.
Thank The JWST For Confirming The First Runaway Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers have been observing the Cosmic Owl for years, wondering if what they were seeing was a long-predicted runaway black hole. Now, 50 years after scientists first predicted the phenomenon, the JWST has provided the clinching evidence.
Hubble Catches Another Glimpse of 3I/ATLAS
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reobserved interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on 30 November with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km from Earth. Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky.
Some Arctic warming ‘irreversible’ even if we cut atmospheric CO2
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