Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here we have an 83-minute interview of Matthew Crick by Michael Shermer; the topic is Francis Crick as described in Matthew’s new book Crick: A Mind in Motion. Talking to a friend last night, I realized that the two best biographies of scientists I’ve read are Matthew’s book and Janet Browne’s magisterial two-volumebiography of Darwin (the two-book set is a must-read, and I recommend both, though Princeton will issue in June a one-volume condensation).
At any rate, if you want to get an 83-minute summary of Matthew’s book, or see if you want to read the book, as you should, have a listen to Matthew’s exposition at the link below. I have recommended his and Browne’s books because they’re not only comprehensive, but eminently readable, and you can get a sense of Matthew’s eloquence by his off-the-cuff discussion with Shermer.
Click below to listen.
I’ve put the cover below because Shermer mentions it at the outset of the discussion:
I now have two sets of photos after this one, but I’m still nervous. If you have good wildlife photos, please sent them in. Thanks!
It’s been a cold week in Chicago (right now it’s 9°F or -13°C), and it’s going to be cold this coming week as well. I hope the turtles at the bottom of Botany Pond are okay. But given the weather it’s appropriate that today we have photographs of Antarctica from reader Paul Turpin. Paul’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
My brother Mark recently returned from a cruise to the Antarctic on the Scenic Eclipse. I told him you loved penguins and he gave me permission to send you these photos. I believe these are all gentoo penguins [Pygoscelis papua] except for one which included a chinstrap friend [Pygoscelis antarcticus]. The open water photo is when they were at the Antarctic Circle.
Welcome to the Sabbath that is made for cats, not cats for the Sabbath: it’s Sunday, January 18, 2026 and National Winnie The Pooh day, commemorating the birthday of A. A. Milne in 1882. Christopher Robin Milne‘s stuffed toys that served as inspiration for the books still exist, as you see below. Note Eeyore, my favorite character and personal spirit animal (I put in the arrow). Pooh Bear is there, along with Eeyore, Kanga and Tigger. You can see them at the New York Public Library, an odd place for them to wind up.
A federal judge in Minnesota imposed restrictions on the actions of immigration agents toward protesters in the state on Friday, a decision that comes after weeks of mounting tension between demonstrators and federal officers.
Judge Kate M. Menendez ordered agents not to retaliate against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” and not to use pepper spray or other “crowd dispersal tools” in retaliation for protected speech. The judge also said agents could not stop or detain protesters in vehicles who were not “forcibly obstructing or interfering with” agents.
The ruling, which granted a preliminary injunction, stems from a lawsuit brought by activists who said agents had violated their rights. The suit was filed before an immigration agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Ms. Good, 37, had partially blocked a roadway where agents were working and did not follow commands to get out of her S.U.V. As she began to drive, an agent near the front of her car opened fire.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement responding to the injunction that “D.H.S. is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”
She said agents had faced assaults, had fireworks launched at them and had the tires of their vehicles slashed. She added that despite “grave threats,” agents had “followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public and federal property.”
Ms. McLaughlin did not say whether the department planned to appeal the ruling.
The judge also said, ““the court’s injunction does nothing to prevent defendants from continuing to enforce immigration laws.” All this seems perfectly proper. What I don’t know, having not been on the scene, is how often protestors do violate the law or obstruct agents from doing their job, which I don’t think is a rare event. The poster below, which urges protestors to violate the law in several ways, is said to have been put out by the group Minnesota Ice Watch. I can’t vouch for its reality, nor am I excusing the ICE agent who killed Renée Good, and there are posters, like one put out by the Minnesota ACLU, that do apprise people of their rights without urging them to act illegally. Still, I suspect that at least a moiety of the protestors hope to incite violence by doing things like obstructing the vehicles of law enforcement or helping suspects escape arrest. So long as these things don’t happen, though, there’s no excuse for firing tear gas or flashbang devices, much less firing guns.
The Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation into elected Democrats in Minnesota, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter, a major escalation in the fight between the federal government and local officials over the aggressive immigration crackdown underway in the city.
The investigation would focus on allegations that Gov. Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, had conspired to impede thousands of federal agents who have been sent to the city since last month. Last week, one of those agents killed a 37-year-old woman, Renee Good.
It remained unclear what investigative steps have been taken. The senior law enforcement official said subpoenas had yet to be issued, but could be in the days to come. Both Mr. Walz and Mr. Frey responded with combative statements on Friday night, denouncing what they said was a weaponized use of law enforcement power and promising to stand firm in the face of the administration’s efforts.
“Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Mr. Walz said in a statement released by his office, which said it had not yet received notice of an investigation. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”
Mr. Frey described the investigation as an “obvious attempt to intimidate” him, but vowed it would not work.
“America depends on leaders that use integrity and the rule of the law as the guideposts for governance,” he said. “Neither our city nor our country will succumb to this fear. We stand rock solid.”
. . . the growing public protests in Minneapolis have angered President Trump, who has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the military into the city. In a social media post on Thursday, Mr. Trump called the protesters in Minnesota “professional agitators,” but offered no evidence to support his claims against what by most accounts are ordinary citizens.
On Friday, however, Mr. Trump appeared to back away from his threat.
“I don’t think I need it right now,” he told reporters, referring to the Insurrection Act.
I suspect this will come to nothing; I don’t even know what laws Walz and Frey are supposed to have violated. Conspiring to impede the action of federal officers? Yes, that could be a violation, but I suspect this is another example of Trump’s bluster and will come to nothing. After all, it’s an investigation, and charges haven’t been filed.
During President Trump’s first term, Delcy Rodríguez was a pariah.
The administration sanctioned Rodríguez, then vice president to autocrat Nicolás Maduro, citing corruption and mismanagement that left the country’s economy in tatters. She oversaw the intelligence agency that rounded up and tortured dissidents. And she blamed U.S. sanctions, not the regime’s socialist rule, for hunger and shortages of medicine.
Now, Trump has made her the U.S.’s primary partner in Venezuela since the ouster of Maduro in a military raid on Jan. 3.
The decision has an obvious upside for Trump: He avoids a military occupation of Venezuela, necessary to install a new, democratic leader.
But it also puts Trump into partnership with a canny Venezuelan politician who, along with her brother Jorge, leader of the National Assembly, has scraped her way to the top with a mix of guile and pragmatism. Rodríguez is guiding Venezuela on an unknown path, but one with a potentially huge payoff for her.
Andrés Izarra, a former minister under Maduro who now lives in exile, said those who believe her to be committed to leftist ideology misunderstand her. He said the primary goal of Rodríguez and her brother is to rule Venezuela.
“Their only principle is power,” Izarra said. “If they need to be capitalist, they will be capitalist.”
Whatever her ideology, diplomats and former regime officials said they expect she’ll do what is needed to survive—not necessarily in a way that would get Trump what he wanted.
“It’s a big mistake to underestimate her,” said Thomas A. Shannon Jr., a former high-ranking State Department official who negotiated regularly with Rodríguez. “Delcy is no dummy.”
So far, Rodríguez has outmaneuvered her main rival, the exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year and whose party won presidential elections in 2024 that Maduro and Rodríguez ignored. Trump met Machado for a private lunch Thursday and accepted her Nobel medal but didn’t appear publicly with her and has dismissed her ability to run the country.
Note that Rodriguez “oversaw the intelligence agency that rounded up and tortured dissidents. And she blamed U.S. sanctions, not the regime’s socialist rule, for hunger and shortages of medicine.” Just running that intelligence agency is sufficient to bar her from running the country, but somehow Trump is in her thrall. I have no idea why; she seems the worst possible replacement for Maduro, especially when compared to Edmundo González or María Corina Machado. González actually won an election against Maduro, and should be the acting President (there’s the nagging question of the country’s military, though). And Machado, in a sad attempt to court Trump, gave him her Nobel Peace Prize Medal (18-karat gold!). Now Trump can say he has a Nobel Prize (figuratively but not literally) while the country continues to be governed by the remnants of the previous dictatorship.
In 2013, Marriott announced that it would transition to cage-free eggs at all of its properties worldwide. It renewed the pledge in 2018, vowing to meet the goal by the end of 2025. But as the deadline approached, activists began to question whether the company would keep its word. Then they began to protest, with demonstrations as far-flung as Thailand, India and Brazil.
Marriott released an update in May that said that the company was “working closely” on its cage-free-egg sourcing efforts and was “pleased with the progress that has been made,” but that it had not achieved its goal. In fact, it was not even close. The company, which has a portfolio of more than 9,300 properties and 30 brands in 144 countries and territories, alluded to challenges posed by avian flu and the global supply chain.
Activists were not satisfied.
Organizations and grassroots groups started ramping up awareness campaigns. They staged more protests in the United States and abroad. They built a website that featured grotesque artificial-intelligence-generated images of Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano surrounded by bloody feathers and dead chickens.
Marriott declined interview requests and said it did not have more information to share beyond a recent statement that reported that 47 percent of egg purchases in its franchised hotels in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean and Latin America were cage-free by the end of 2024. The statement said 92 percent of egg purchases for Marriott-managed properties in the U.S. were cage-free.
You don’t want to go to that website if you don’t want to see the abuse suffered by battery chickens. And I’ve seen video of male chicks being ground up alive, for, after all, only hens lay eggs. I have to admit that I don’t check on my eggs, though I have bought free-range chicken eggs, but I should check more closely, and admit that I’m hypocritical in this respect.
Many people wish they could spend more time with their dogs.
Director Ben Leonberg took that idea to extraordinary lengths, spending three years making the horror movie “Good Boy” with his dog, Indy, as the protagonist.
“I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to make a movie where I essentially just got to play with my dog,” Leonberg, 38, told The Washington Post.
One scene in the film shows Indy getting caught in a snare. On his back, Indy vigorously shakeshis body to try to escape.
In reality, Indy was enjoying a blissful moment while shooting, wiggling during a belly rub from Leonberg.
Through editing and ominous music, Leonberg helped make Indy look frightened and desperate. The suspenseful movie follows Indy as he protects his owner from evil forces only the dog can see.
The Astra Film Awards have been going since 2018, and I have to say that I’m not impressed with their selections. But giving a dg an acting award raises a serious philosophical question: how can a dg deserve such an ward if it’s not acting. It’s all AI and tummy-tickling! I can imagine how the five losers felt when they were beaten out by a mutt. But kudos to the mutt; I hope he got some treats alongside the plaque.
From Masih, we hear Iran’s chief prosecutor saying that they’re not withholding punishment of protestors. It was that idea that made Trump stay his hand. Someone should show him this video:
Regime in Iran responds to president @realDonaldTrump with threat of execution 800 protesters.
Ali Salehi, Tehran’s chief prosecutor, dismissed comments by Donald Trump regarding a reported halt to executions, saying Iran’s response would be “firm, deterrent, and swift.”
Islamic… pic.twitter.com/0jwUyIq0vt
From Simon: live and learn. Hamsun gave his Nobel Prize to Goebbels! And I’ve read Hamsun. I can’t embed the tweet, but click on it if you want to go to the post:
The Number Ten cat shows a conspecific individual gamboling in the snow:
This Polish girl, born in 1928, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with her mother in December 1942 as part of the repression against Polish citizens. Just a few months later, on February 18, 1943, Czesława was murdered at the age of 14 with a phenol injection… pic.twitter.com/uoTEIMB60S
And of this Dr. Cobb says, “A thread on the possibility of life on Europa which now looks less likely 🙁 “
New paper alert!tl;dr: the seafloor of Europa is probably tectonically inert, meaning little to no active fracturing that could expose fresh rock to seawater.Without such water–rock reactions the prospect for there being life within Europa just took a big hit.A thread:
Here, from the Express Tribunein Pakistan, is an article about the world’s oldest cat, who just turned 30 years old. (Also see the story at the New York Post.)
An excerpt (Flossie has had a checkered career):
Flossie, a British domestic short-haired tortoiseshell cat, has turned 30 years old, extending her Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest living cat.
Born on December 29, 1995, Flossie reached the milestone birthday in 2025, further cementing her place in record books. Her age was officially verified by Guinness World Records in November 2022, when she was confirmed to be 26 years and 316 days old. At the time, her age was estimated to be equivalent to around 120 human years.
Flossie’s early life began in a feral colony near St Helens Hospital in Merseyside, England, where she was rescued as a kitten. Over the years, she lived with several owners before eventually coming under the care of the UK animal welfare charity Cats Protection.
In 2022, Cats Protection arranged for Flossie to be adopted by Victoria Green, who lives in Orpington, England. The charity worked closely with veterinarians to verify Flossie’s date of birth using historical records, enabling Guinness World Records to formally certify her age.
At the time of her record confirmation, Guinness World Records noted that Flossie was deaf and had limited eyesight. Despite these age-related conditions, she was otherwise considered to be in good health. The organisation said she maintained a stable daily routine that included regular meals, extended periods of sleep and gentle play.
Flossie is currently recognised as the oldest living cat in the world and ranks among the seven oldest verified cats in recorded history. While other cats, including Creme Puff, are documented to have lived longer in the past, Flossie remains the oldest confirmed feline alive today.
Here’s another tweet:
Flossie, the world’s oldest living cat, will celebrate her 30th birthday on December 29, 2025. pic.twitter.com/NoZ42sBby2
Of course Flossie is a long way from the offical World’s Oldest Cat Ever, the famous Creme Puff, who lived to an astonishing 38 years and 3 days. This was verified by Guinness, and what amazes me is this:
Creme Puff’s owner, Jake Perry, said her diet consisted of dry cat food and claimed he supplemented it with broccoli, eggs, turkey bacon, coffee with cream, and every two days “an eyedropper full of red wine.” Perry claimed that this diet was key to her longevity, and that the wine “circulated the arteries.
Coffee and wine!
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James Fell’s website says he’s a historian, and he gives some (yes, sweary) history about a heroic moggy. Click the screenshots to read:
Some excerpts:
Plenty of hero dog stories, but what about hero cats? Some say if a house cat was as large as a big dog, no one would want them because they’d death murder the shit you. Not Masha though. She used her body to keep an abandoned baby warm against the Russian winter cold.
. . . .on January 10, 2015, Masha rescued an infant.
It happened in the city of Obninsk, about 50 miles southwest of Moscow. Russia in January is not terribly hospitable. Just ask Napoleon. Or the fucking Nazis. Oh, wait. You can’t. Because most of them froze to death. Anyway, Masha was a “stray” that was beloved by residents of an apartment building where she made her home. They fed Masha well; this was one fat ass cat. Good thing too. The extra padding probably kept the baby alive.
. . . . Late that Saturday, building resident Nadezhda Makhovikova knew something was amiss. Masha was normally a quiet cat, but she sounded like she was being murdered. Nadezhda went to investigate and found Masha lying in a box in the entranceway to the building. The big fluffy cat was lying atop a crying baby to keep it warm and howling S O Fucking S.
The baby boy was dressed in warm clothes and had a pacifier, bottle, and spare diapers. But this was the Russian winter, and it was already late. The child would not have survived the night. So, yeah. Shitty thing to leave a baby out like that. I just googled “abandoned baby freeze to death” and there are plenty of horrific stories. Sometimes I hate my job.
But this story has a happy ending. Masha was a good girl, and she saved the day. An ambulance was called, and Masha tried to jump in the back to continue her vigil. Vera Ivanina, one of the attending paramedics, explained that Masha even chased them. “She was so worried about where we were taking the baby,” Vera said. “She ran right behind us, meowing.”
The boy was about two months old, clean and well fed, with no signs of abuse. Other than being abandoned in the Russian winter, that is. The hospital asserted the little boy was in good health, suffering no ill effects from the cold thanks to Masha keeping him warm. The story made international news and there were many offers to adopt the young boy, as well as to adopt Masha. Masha was all fuck that I like my freedom.
Here’s a video showing Masha, who seems quite fluffy and insulated:
All’s well that ends well!
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This story comes from LifeWise Insights (click headline to read). I’m not sure that cats are capable of gratitude but of course do prefer some situations more than others. If a rescuer gets purred at and sat on, well, that could simply be the actions of a well-cared-for cat and not what we think of as “gratitude.” But let’s see what the article has to say:
I can’t embed the text but I do append two screenshots from a longer article:
The problem is that a change in patterns and a reduction in alertness when a cat learns that food, warmth, and safety is now constant does no mean it’s grateful. In fact, we have no way of knowing whether a cat feels the same things as a grateful human. This is equivalent to the vexing and unanswerable question, “What is it like to be a bat?” Now we can guess, based on some behaviors, that cats do feel emotions similar to humans, like fear, but “gratitude”? I don’t know.
And a Google translation from the Spanish for the video below. But why did they let the cat inside in the first place? Wasn’t this result predictable? Was it staged?
He entered as a customer… he left as a professional thief 😂 They couldn’t catch him 😅 #cat #cats #catpranks #funny moment #supermarket #viral #animals
Thank Ceiling Cat that two readers came through with photos yesterday. Today’s batch includes not butterflies but vertebrates, and is from Pratyaydipta Rudra, a statistics professor at Oklahoma State University, and his wife Sreemala. The pair share a big bird-and-butterfly website called Wingmates. Their captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
The river otter images from a recent reader’s wildlife photos section inspired me to put together this batch of photos from our fall trip to Southeast Oklahoma when we stumbled upon a group of river otters. Otters, in general, are my favorites due to their fun characters and cool behaviors. However, I was never been able to see North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) close enough to get good enough photos until this encounter.
We (my wife Sreemala and I) were hiking along the river just after sunrise with the hope of finding some cool critters while also enjoying the beautiful foggy atmosphere and the fall foliage. Only a few other people were out at that time. A lady who was coming back greeted us, and noticing our long telephoto lenses, told us that she saw some animals floating on the water that looked like rats. We immediately got excited thinking they must be otters since the other “rat-like” animals such as muskrats or beavers would be pretty unlikely in the fast-flowing stream in that area. River otters, on the other hand, especially enjoy the fast flow and the cascades. Within a few minutes, we were able to locate a group of at least six of them fishing next to the cascades.
Some of them soon moved up on a rock (across the river from us) for resting and doing some morning yoga as we snapped a few photos:
The river otters are quite social, and it’s fun to watch them interact with each other. We watched them for a while and they were quite aware of our presence, but they went about with their own business of grooming, catching fish and crawdads, etc.:
Here are a couple of them swimming in a relatively calmer stretch of the river with reflection of fall foliage:
But, most of the time, the otters stayed close to the cascades. I think it is easier to catch the fishes there as they pop up more, but I might be wrong. You can also see a human (Homo sapiens) fishing in the distance:
Another image of the fast-flowing river with the light of the rising sun on the trees bordering it:
Most of these wider images are captured using my cellphone. I clearly remember that this was the day I figured out that I could capture slow shutter photos using my cellphone and got so excited that I kept taking photos of the stream with different compositions:
These next images are all from one of my favorite parts of Oklahoma. This region in the southeast part of the state features beautiful hilly areas and several small rivers and creeks flowing through them, creating some wonderful scenery— especially during the fall. The two things that make these fall experiences absolutely wonderful are bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) trees and fog along the rivers.
The fall colors on the bald cypress are very different from what most people think of when they think of fall foliage. The fine textures along with the burnt orange coloration make them quite unique. Add to that the fact that these trees can stand right in the water developing “knees” that grow upwards from their roots. There are different theories on what utility they might provide. I am not a biologist so, I will stay away from claiming I understand them:
Here is another creek in the same area that had calmer water allowing for nice reflections of the bald cypresses along it:
Lights and shadows along the creek…:
A White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) peaked through the forest:
A handsome Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus) against the fall foliage:
Great Blue Herons are abundant here, and they can add to the magical scenes with morning fog along the river. Here’s one sitting on a bald cypress while a group of Double-crested Cormorants (Nannopterum auritum) swim by:
Another magical scene. The birds (cormorants) again add to the already beautiful scene. The fog makes the scene look like a painting:
This particular tree from the previous photo and this photo is a famous one in the park and a good photography subject during the fall. On this particular morning, I was lucky to capture this scene with a tiny amount of sunlight on the foggy scene when a Great Blue Heron flew in. This image won me an international photography contest award. It was just about being at the right place at the right time:
Sreemala was standing to my left shooting birds in flight using her telephoto lens while I was trying to get the tree with its reflection using a wide lens. She also noticed the heron flying in and captured her own version with her telephoto lens. This resulting image has its own flavor with the bird bigger in the frame, but she was unlucky to be holding the telephoto at that moment as she missed out on the reflection and the full view of the tree. It turns out that it’s really about being at the right place at the right time with the right lens!:
It’s totally possible for someone to like Sreemala’s image more, but my rule would still work as you can then say that she ended up having the “right” lens at that moment.
Oklahoma may not have the same reputation as Texas or Louisiana for the bald cypress fall colors, but we have our own nook around this corner of the state, and I absolutely cherish every trip down there.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, January 17, and Popeye the Sailor Man Day. Here is the first strip to feature the spinach-addicted sailor, which appeared on this day in 1929. That was ten years after artist Elzie Crisler created the “Thimble Theater” strip which originally lacked Popeye but was about the Oyl family (including Olive Oyl). But here’s the first strip that featured Popeye, who of course took over the feature. Click to enlarge.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Although the protests in Iran seem to have quieted down for the moment, the NYT explains how protestors circumvented the regime’s internet and cellphone blackout: “Inside the Fight to keep Iran online.” (Archived here.)
Iran’s communications blackout last week seemed complete. Internet and cellular networks had been shut down by the authorities. Online banking, shopping and text messaging services stopped working. Information about the growing protests was scarce.
Yet a ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers pierced Iran’s digital barricades. Using thousands of Starlink satellite internet systems that they had quietly smuggled into the country, they got online and spread images of troops firing into the streets and families searching for bodies.
Their actions, described by digital rights researchers and others, forced Iran’s government to respond. The authorities deployed military-grade electronic weaponry designed to disrupt the GPS signals that Starlink equipment needs to function, a step that activists and civil society groups said was rarely taken outside battlefields like those in Ukraine.
The cracks exposed in Iran’s internet shutdown were no accident. Since 2022, activists and civil society groups have worked on sneaking Starlink terminals into the country, aided by a U.S. government sanctions exemption for Starlink and American companies to offer communication tools in Iran. About 50,000 of the terminals are now in Iran, according to digital activists, in defiance of an Iranian law passed last year that bans the systems, and rules prohibiting unlicensed services.
“You need to plan to have that infrastructure in place,” said Fereidoon Bashar, the executive director of ASL19, a digital rights group focused on Iran. “This is because of years of planning and work among different groups.”
The hidden networks of Starlinks — and the Iranian government’s aggressive response against them — shows how national digital blackouts are becoming harder for authorities to enforce. Governments have long used internet disruptions to suppress dissent in countries like India, Myanmar and Uganda. But the spread of tools like satellite internet have complicated the shutdowns and created a cat-and-mouse hunt against new technologies.
Starlink, provided by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, beams an internet connection from satellites to terminals on Earth, bypassing any land-based censorship infrastructure. That has helped the service play an outsize role in Iran’s protests, helping demonstrators organize and communicate with the outside world.
Starlink is still available only to a sliver of the Iranian population, and information about the protests, which have left an estimated 3,000 dead, remains limited.
Well, give credit to Trump and Musk for making this possible, though Musk didn’t create Starlink to bypass dictatorial Internet blackouts. But the administration did exempt Starlink from sanctions on Iran, and that was surely done to allow the Iranian people to communicate with the rest of the world.
President Donald Trump on Thursday accepted a Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, a striking bid by the current laureate to sway a U.S. president who recently declined to support her challenge to Venezuela’s ruling regime.
The gesture came 12 days after the U.S. president toppled Venezuela’s longtime leader, Nicolás Maduro, then chose to preserve ties with the existing regime rather than back Machado, whose movement claimed victory in 2024 elections.
Machado’s meeting withTrump was an effort to regain influence over Venezuela’s future as the threat of U.S. military action continues to hang over the new leadership in Caracas — and as Trump has demanded Venezuela open its oil fields to U.S. companies. Machado was her nation’s democratic leader-in-waiting until Trump backed the existing vice president, who has indicated willingness to bend to U.S. demands.
Machado “is a wonderful woman who has been through so much,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the meeting. “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
Machado’s effort to win the president’s sympathies through handing off her prize sparked a sharp reaction from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which has said that a prize cannot be re-awarded to another person.
Machado said the Venezuelan people were giving Trump the medal “as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”
Since the Jan. 3 raid that captured Maduro and brought him to a New York courtroom, Trump has questioned whether Machado has the clout to assumea leadership role in her country. Instead, he has thrown his weight behind Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president but has indicated she is willing to put a U.S.-friendly spin on her leadership while keeping the existing regime in place.
Machado entered the West Wing around noon and left after 2½ hours to go to meetings with Congress. Her meeting with Trump took place without cameras — a rarity for a president who typically publicizes such encounters. The low-profile visit may have signaled Trump’s preference for strengthening ties with the current Venezuelan leadership rather than elevating Machado.
OY!
President Donald J. Trump meets with María Corina Machado of Venezuela in the Oval Office, during which she presented the President with her Nobel Peace Prize in recognition and honor.🕊️ pic.twitter.com/v7pYHjVNVO
No, the Venezuelan people did not give Trump the medal; Machado did, and I have to say that this gesture looks more than a little like groveling. Even if Machado is trying to persuade Trump to let her run for President, it doesn’t look like Trump’s in the mood to promote the democratic elections that Venezuela and Machado favor. Trump’s backing Delcy Rodriguez, a Maduro-ite, as interim President of Venezuela is not good optics for a country that’s supposed to promote freedom. Trump should not have taken that medal, either. That’s the closest he’s going to get to getting a Nobel Peace Prize. Where is any peace he has forged?
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column in The Free Press; this week’s version is called “TGIF: ICE on ice” (it refers to an ICE agent slipping on ice in Minnesota).
→ Abolish the police, except in Iran: As protests for freedom continue in Iran, the ayatollah’s brutal regime is responding by gunning down thousands of protesters. Are there marches here to stand in solidarity? No. Is our freedom all entwined? Again no. So how is the American progressive establishment treating this? Well, they’re either saying it’s fake or they’re saying it’s great. The chair of the DNC says America is just as repressive: “If comparing the U.S. to Iran makes you angry, ask why,” says Ken Martin. Leftist influencer Hasan Piker defended himself against critics: “You liked a Khamenei tweet when he is responsible for killing so many people? Listen, sometimes you can find poetry in the strangest places.” And sometimes you find terror apologia exactly where you expect. Scores of Scottish independence social media accounts went dark after Iran instituted an internet blackout. Meaning, when Iran shut down the Iranian internet, suddenly a lot of anti-government protest accounts in other places went dark too. Odd. And then the chef’s kiss is this treatise from Progressive International. In short: Police are meanies, except in Iran, where they are very very good. Here’s Progressive International:
In the imperial countries, the police function as the domestic arm of the empire. They suppress dissent, criminalize resistance, and enforce accumulation through violence particularly against Black, Indigenous, and other Peoples of Color. . . . In Iran, the Law Enforcement Command exists within a radically different context: a state born of popular revolution, subjected to decades of sanctions, assassinations, sabotage, and overt military threats. Crucially, it faces sustained attempts at regime change operations and color revolution tactics aimed at disarming the state internally by delegitimizing its capacity to maintain order.
They have such newfound respect for maintaining order. Hot. They’re all for abolishing the police until the police is named Ayatollah, and then it’s like, “Come beat me, Ayatollah.”
57 percent of voters disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws
53 percent think the shooting of Renee Good was not justified, while only 35 percent think it was justified
When I think about what the Trump administration is doing with these ICE raids, the only explanation that makes sense is that fear and panic and viral videos are the goal—since it’ll ostensibly discourage immigration and make life so stressful for existing immigrants that they’ll self-deport. Though I don’t think this video of an ICE agent slipping on ice was one of the ideas laid out in the ICE social marketing sync. Almost worse than the fall itself is the unfortunately perfect symmetry of him getting taken out by ice. Anyway, I do think all the noise and chaos is part of their plan (am I QAnon now?). For a window into ICE officer recruitment, you have to read this hilarious Slate story: “You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.”
And did you know that in California, for example, being an immigrant is, by law, an argument for a more lenient sentence? Here’s this: “The prosecution, in the interests of justice, and in furtherance of the findings and declarations of Section 1016.2, shall consider the avoidance of adverse immigration consequences in the plea negotiation process as one factor in an effort to reach a just resolution.”
I just. . . there has to be a middle ground between terrorizing immigrants and no jail if criminal is an immigrant. There must be. . . something in between those two outcomes. Call me a kook but I still dream a dream.
→ News of the Jews: . . . Late last week, a crowd gathered outside a Queens synagogue and chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here.” Zohran Mamdani initially stayed silent, then said in a statement that the language was “wrong” and has “no place in New York City.” I’m sure. He was probably busy fighting for a bidet to be installed in the mayoral abode, an “aspirational hope,” he’s said, which feels suspiciously European even if I technically agree with him. “We’ll see if we can get it done,” he declared with gusto, and the strength of his ancestors at his back. Maybe he got the idea while washing up in Steve Spielberg’s bathroom, after their private dinner at the director’s NYC apartment this week. If one of the “cool Jews” talks to him, maybe we can fix this mess, Spielberg was probably thinking. And the UAE has reportedly cut back government-funded scholarships for their young people to attend UK universities, citing fears that students could be radicalized by Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamists on British campuses. That’s for real. They don’t want their youth joining hotheaded religious sects and so they keep them away from London. It’s perfect. Saudi Arabia is more lowkey than Shoreditch.
*One of my nightmares is that Greenland becomes America’s 51st state. Not that I dislike Greenland—I just want it to remain as it is, a quasi-independent entity that’s really part of Denmark. As a commenter pointed out earlier, we used to have seven bases there (I landed at one when I was a child, refueling on the way to Greece), and we probably could get more bases if they were really needed. But they don’t seem to be, and at any rate saber-rattling about the US taking it over Greenland insane. Now Trump is threatening extra tariffs on countries that oppose his initiative to absorb Greenland. Shoot me now!
President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that oppose his efforts to take control of Greenland.
“I may do that for Greenland, too. I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that,” the president said at the White House on Friday, adding, “that will end up being the story.”
Speaking during a healthcare event, Trump asserted the threat of tariffs against countries such as France and Germany had previously helped him address high prices for prescription drugs. That approach could help him gain control of Greenland, he said.
Trump has said the U.S. must own the semiautonomous Danish territory of about 75,000 people, which is located immediately northeast of Canada, for America’s national security. The president has said in recent days that if the U.S. doesn’t control Greenland, China or Russia will. The White House hasn’t ruled out using force to take the territory.
Denmark and Greenland have said that the island isn’t available and that its people don’t want to be part of the U.S.
Trump’s repeated efforts to annex Greenland have sparked a rare public row with some of his Republican allies in Congress, who have sharply rebuked the plan and said it would violate a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally’s sovereignty and undermine U.S. trust with its European partners.
Several European countries have sent small numbers of troops to Greenland this week, as part of a mission to deter U.S. interest in the island.
A bipartisan Congressional delegation visited Copenhagen for discussions with senior Danish officials and lawmakers on Friday, offering messages of reassurance that the legislative branch opposed Trump’s wish to annex Greenland.
“This is one more example of unhelpful rhetoric. We don’t need Greenland for national security,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif), who is on the Congressional delegation in Copenhagen.
If we need Greenland for extra security, we can politely ask them if we can build a few extra bases there. (No, Russian and Chinese ships are not swarming around the country.). We do not have to buy or attack the damn place! Just what we need, a war between the U.S. and NATO.
Do you know what might have saved Renee Good’s life? A necktie.
Bear with me.
Good’s death was the result of a lack of professionalism on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Whatever silly shenanigans Good may have been up to before the shooting, the video of the incident makes it clear that it was the federal agents, not Good, who escalated the situation to the point at which it became dangerous. Good may have been guilty of a traffic violation or two, possibly even a misdemeanor, but she did not set about trying to ram ICE agents, in spite of the obvious lies told by Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in the case.
What did happen: ICE agents approached Good’s car bellowing obscenities and giving her contradictory orders, one telling her to clear the street and the other demanding she “get out of the f—–g car,” with one of them calling her a “f—–g bitch” after she had been shot in the head. Good seems to have been complying with one of those demands and not the other, for reasons that are not difficult to imagine. The contradictory demands and the obscenities are prima facie evidence of a lack of ordinary professionalism on the part of the ICE agents, which comes as no surprise: ICE has abandoned any pretense of high standards when it comes to recruiting, its most recent classes of officers having been recruiting from the bottom of the same barrel from which we extract Transportation Security Administration creeps and thieves and corrupt Customs and Border Protection agents.
The ridiculous mall-commando get-ups in which ICE agents are costumed are an affront to republican manners: The masks—which should be forbidden, categorically, to all American law enforcement—symbolically violate the fundamental promise of public accountability for public servants. The tactical vests and plate carriers and helmets and the rest of that imbecilic fantasy dress-up gear is almost always inappropriate, and it is comical in light of the fact that this particular ICE squad apparently did not have the tactical acumen to deal with the challenging environment of an ordinary Midwestern city in a relatively mild January and kept getting their vehicles stuck in the snow—but I suppose snow is not what one is planning for when one is dressed for Fallujah.
Allow me to address the ladies and gentlemen at ICE in what apparently is their mother tongue: Take off the masks and put on a f—–g tie.
I’ll say this much for Donald Trump: He may be badly dressed—it is amazing that he can make a Brioni suit look so cheap—but he almost always is badly dressed like a badly dressed adult. Also typically dressed as a responsible adult: the American police officer in his traditional uniform.
That is worth thinking on.
There are reams and reams of psychological studies confirming that how we are dressed has an effect, sometimes subtle and sometimes profound, on how we think and behave. We tell our law enforcement agents that they are “at war,” that they are part of a “war on drugs” or a “war on crime” or whatever, and incompetent hacks such as Kristi Noem—whose own weird and pathetic dress-up fetish has been muchremarked-upon—tell them lies about how the people with whom they are interacting are “domestic terrorists” or agents of a possibly fictitious global cartel. And then we dress them up like the world’s most slovenly stormtroopers.
And then we are surprised when they act like the world’s most slovenly stormtroopers.
We need to knock off the paramilitary crap when it comes to law enforcement—not only for aesthetic reasons but for political and moral reasons. Dress a guy up like a cowboy and he’ll start acting like he’s in Yellowstone. Dress a public servant up like he’s at war rather than at work and war is what you’re going to get.
The point is not that Good would have done anything different had the agents had ties, but that they would have behaved more professionally. Well, given their poor training and status as barrel-scrapings, I don’t think so. I won’t say anything about pigs and lipstick, but ICE really does need to ditch the masks. And the administration needs to stop telling us what happened until there is a good and objective investigation.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying to protect Andrzej:
Hili: What are those papers?
Andrzej: My journal from 37 years ago.
Hili: Don’t show it to anyone, or you’ll offend people again.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to za papiery?
Ja: Mój dziennik sprzed 37 lat.
Hili: Nie pokazuj go nikomu, bo znowu ludzi obrazisz.
One from Masih. For some reason (why?) Twitter won’t let me embed it, but click on the screenshot to see a voice message Masih got from Tehran, arguing that the number of dead protestors is much higher ;than 12,000:
From Luana; Manitoba’s counting the antisemitic slaughter at Australia’s Bondi beach as ” Islamophobia” is incomprehensible. “Lives lost to [Islamophobic] hate on Bondi Beach?” Did the murdered Jews deserve their fate because they were Islamophobes? Am I missing something?
The massacre of Jews at Bondi Beach is being commemorated as an example of Islamophobia at the Manitoba Legislature? pic.twitter.com/YkcRNBMAPA
This 14-year-old kid offered himself as a volunteer since he was skinny enough to fit. With a pulley system, he went down 49.2ft and successfully rescued the baby. 🙌😭
This skinny kid didn’t need to dress up like Spider-Man to become a superhero! 🥹🫶pic.twitter.com/V5AUTbuqz4
— Restoring Your Faith in Humanity (@HumanityChad) January 15, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She had just turned 11. https://t.co/NnnQxQyAgE
Two from Herr Professor Doktor Cobb. First, a pack of a dozen wolves—in the Netherlands!
Beautiful and incredible scenes from the centre of the Netherlands, a country with 1.5 times the density of people in the UK. A pack of 11 wolves roaming through the snow!
“When a regime turns off the Internet during mass killings, and at the same time the leaders of the same regime [use] the privilege of freedom of speech on social media to mislead the rest of the world, it is not about restoring order. It is about destroying the evidence.” —from Masih’s speech below
In a comment this morning, Norman Gilinsky linked to the speech below given to the UN Security Council by anti-Iranian-regime activist Masih Alinejad. Norman called it amazing, forceful, unrelenting, and powerful. As a huge fan of Masih, I of course had to listen to it, and yes, it’s forceful, passionate, and ineffably sad given the UN’s inaction. I’ve put it below for your edification: it’s 15½ minutes long.
So far the UN hasn’t issued any statements criticizing the behavior of the Iranian regime in massacring thousands of protestors.
Masih calls out the UN for failing to respond to the massacres, sending a message to Iran that what it’s doing is pretty much okay. She argues that “it will get much worse if the world does not take serious action”, and that all Iranians are united in calling for the freeing of Iran from the present regime. (This is in sharp contrast with the UN’s repeated criticisms of Israel during the war with Gaza, apparently sending the message that massacres are okay with the UN so long as they don’t involve Jews)
Masih probably knows more about what’s going on in the streets of Iran than anybody else, as she has lines of communication with the protestors that others don’t have. (Iranians are using Starlink satellite phones.)
A representative of Iran was among the listeners, but I wonder if any of them really took to heart what Masih says. Particularly moving is her description of some of the young protestors who were killed, which she does to personalize and drive home the regime’s brutality, and she breaks down in tears at 11:35, unable to give more names of the slaughtered.
What is she asking the UN to do? She’s not explicit, but something to stop the killing—perhaps to stop treating Iran as a “legitimate government”. The UN of course cannot do that, though it can help. I hope that after hearing the list of murders and murderers, the listeners absorb the same lesson George Patton imparted to his soldiers from his real speech of June 5, 1944 (not the movie speech):
“When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it’s not dirt, it’s the blood and guts of what was once your best friend, you’ll know what to do.”
